Five kinds of game that are perfect for a commute

A commute is a strange play environment. You've got a fixed chunk of time, spotty signal, and you might have to stop the second your stop comes up. Not every game handles that well, so I've gotten picky about what lives on my phone for the journey.

Puzzle games are the obvious pick. Something like Tile Tangle lets you solve a level in a couple of minutes and put it down without losing anything. No penalty for stopping mid-thought.

Arcade racers are my second choice. A single race in Neon Drift Circuit is short, self-contained and doesn't need a connection. Perfect between stations.

Calm exploration games work too, as long as they let you pause cleanly. And casual pick-up games, the Big Bass 3in1 type, are ideal when you just want to zone out for a few minutes. The one genre I avoid on the move is anything with real-time strategy, because getting yanked away mid-battle is genuinely painful.