Break Room
Between essays and ideas, a place to wander.
Arcade games
Falling Blocks
Stack falling blocks. Clear lines. Don't let them reach the top.
Maze Eater
Navigate the maze. Eat all the dots. Avoid the ghosts.
Snake
Eat food and grow longer. Don't hit yourself.
Glow Worms
A dark field and two dozen glowing worms eating their way across it. A head that touches a body dies and a body never does, so nobody wins a chase - you win by leaving your body where somebody else is going. Whatever dies spills everything it ate.
Solitaire
Klondike. Build up the foundations. Clear the tableau.
Tanks
Defend the eagle base. Drive a tank, blast bricks, hold off six stages of escalating waves.
Pool
Eight-ball on a nine-foot table. Pot your seven and then the 8 in the pocket you are aiming at. The balls move by the published physics: where the tip lands on the cue ball decides what it does after the hit.
Air Hockey
A tournament table and a puck on a cushion of air, first to seven against the room's four. Your mallet goes where the mouse goes: stand between the puck and your goal, and hit through it.
Chess
A wooden board and the room's four across it, from Jake, who has just learnt the moves, to Yuki, who does not lose. Click a piece and then its square, or carry it there; FIDE's rules, draws and all.
Table Tennis
A tournament table and the room's four across the net, from Jake, who plays at lunch, to Yuki, who does not miss. It plays at an easy pace: put your racket in the ring where the ball is coming and it hits by itself, and swipe up through the ball for topspin, down for backspin.
Tinbit
A tin robot from the desk and an office full of bugs after hours. Jump on the bugs, strike the parcels from below for cogs and power, and reach the charger at the end of each level - sixteen of them, over desks and bookshelves, through a fish tank and under the raised floor, across the roof at night and down into the core, where the queen of the big beetles waits.
Nitro Alley
An isometric combat racer, after Rock N' Roll Racing: four cars, five races, a gun in the nose and mines out of the back. The driving is built on numbers measured off the original - its 4:1 view, its speeds, its ninety degrees a second.
Pinball
Two flippers, three pop bumpers, slingshots, drop targets and a spinner. Three balls per game.
Minesweeper
Clear the grid. Flag the mines. One wrong click and it's over.
Alien Defense
Defend Earth from waves of descending aliens.
Brick Break
Break all the bricks with a bouncing ball.
Rock Blaster
Rotate, thrust, fire. Shatter rocks. Beware the UFO.
Crossing
Hop across traffic and the river. Fill all 5 home slots before time runs out.
Blackjack
Beat the dealer to 21. Hit, stand, double, split. Bet big.
2048
Slide tiles to merge matching numbers. Reach the 2048 tile.
Texas Hold'em
Heads-up poker vs two AI opponents. Bluff. Call. Crush the pot.
Video Poker
Jacks or Better. Hold your cards, draw for the perfect hand.
Moon Lander
Thrust against gravity. Land softly on the pad. Watch your fuel.
City Defense
Protect 6 cities from incoming missiles. Aim with the mouse, click to fire.
Lightcycle
Two cycles, permanent neon trails. First to 5 wins takes the match.
Blast Radius
Corridors one cell wide. Blow the soft blocks apart, clear the enemies, find the way out - and stay out of your own blast.
Cave Digger
Dig for gems under a ceiling of loose rock. Everything you dig out from under comes down - on the enemies if you time it, on you if you do not.
Egg Run
Twelve eggs, a scaffold of ladders and a clock. Hens patrol the planks, and from level eight something worse is let out of its cage.
Head Volley
Two on a beach with a net between them. Nobody may catch the ball - you head it, chest it or knee it back over, and whoever lets it touch the sand hands over the point.
Bubble Trap
Blow a bubble at something and it is stuck inside, drifting up out of your way - until the bubble gives out and lets it loose again, faster than before. Burst a cluster in one jump and the score doubles with every one.
Fireflies
A night meadow of fireflies, each flashing on its own clock. Flash a lantern in their rhythm and the ones nearby follow, until the whole meadow keeps one beat. Nothing to lose and no clock to beat.