Achievements. Trophies. Platinum. These are household terms to the completionist gamer who aims to add another notch to the perfected games pole. This is the in-thing when it comes to today’s gaming sphere. Nothing makes a profile stand out more than collecting all those 100% mastered titles.

But not all people have the time for that. There are some whose competitive tendencies tend to stick to a strictly single-player atmosphere – and also run on budgeted time. Why take 50 playing hours or more to build a rush when you can bag a high score on a less demanding app and brag about it on social media moments later? There are a few things that can contest the legitimacy of a properly recorded video showing your feats.

And this is where the casual gaming sphere struts its stuff. It doesn’t need too much expensive and niche gear, unlike the dedicated console or gaming PC crowd. It also gets more attention and is more relatable to a wider audience. Lastly, it has fewer requirements, may it be the gaming platform or the controls used.

Now that’s all that's been said, let’s get a glimpse of these simple games that went viral, took the world by storm, and still soldier on even in the face of new gaming.

Flappy Bird

Have you ever felt both infuriated and excited at once? Flappy Bird is more than happy to deliver. Considered a sleeper hit in 2014, it was the most downloaded game on Android and iOS around January. The game puts you in control of a bird that needs to pass through gaps in metal pipes. The tap-to-flap game may be simple – until you get past the first ten obstacles. The game has been long removed from the storefronts, but many app developers took the chance to create their own versions. Flappy Bird left a legacy of rage compilations that are still watched even today.

Wordle

This started out as a word game made in 2021 to be played among a small group of friends and relatives. A simple letter grid put against a single-colored backdrop doesn’t stand out at the start. It becomes a different story once you start playing it. You have six attempts to guess the featured word of the day. A yellow color on a grid square is an included letter in the wrong place. Getting a light-green shade on a tile means you got the right letter and its placement. Wordle is still active today, given that there’s no shortage of 5-letter words of the day to use anytime soon.

If you love playing Wordle, you might want to check out our word puzzle game, WordPro as well.

2048

This sliding number tile game puts you in a 4x4 grid, challenging you to create the number ‘2048’ as you add tiles in multiples of 2. This was initially a testbed game made by Gabriele Cirulli to find out if he could code games from scratch. This is a more flexible and somewhat easier version of Threes: another sliding number tile game that works with multiples of 3 instead of by 2s. This game became viral alongside Flappy Bird, with many variations born out of the original material. Many browser games have taken the liberty to recreate 2048 games in new and exciting visions.

Sudoku

This is one of the oldest games, if not the oldest, that make it to this list. This was originally a periodical puzzle game in the 1980s, starting its life in magazines, then to dedicated puzzle books, and finally to its digital form known by many. Despite its age, it is by no means less popular than the other entries. Trying this puzzle out? You get 9 squares in a 3x3 arrangement with even smaller 3x3 grids. Every row, column, and square needs to be filled out with numbers 1-9 without repeating their placements anywhere. What’s better is that regardless of whether you’re playing online or offline, print or digital, there’s a Sudoku game you can test your logic skills with.

Temple Run

Run. Jump. Slide. Collect items. Run even faster. This is pretty much the gist of endless runner games, and Temple Run led the running in 2011. You’re an explorer who took an artifact from some temple ruins, and you’re now on the run from its guardians: demon monkeys who are out to reclaim what was lost. You’ll be using much of your touchscreen abilities like swiping and tapping. Its success became the starting point of endless runners as its own game type. Now, we enjoy plenty of other runners: each game tries to be unique by introducing its own innovations.

The Password Game

We can gamify anything and anything we will – including password creation. This is an up-and-comer in the world of simple games, and it’s reaching quite the fanbase on short notice. Playing is simple: create a password that fits the seemingly endless requirements imposed by the system. No rule in this game can be ignored, so prepare to adjust that password to fit whatever the instructions tell you to. It’s clean, fun, and can test how far you will comply before you bail out and call it a day.

There are a lot of other simple games that are just as fun, but we have quite a short list. Did we miss out on anything?