Ten minutes while you wait: four games for a short gap

Most games ask for an hour. Some ask for twenty minutes. A few understand that you are standing at a bus stop with a phone in one hand and nothing else to do.

These four do. None of them needs a download, none asks you to make an account, and — the part that actually matters at a bus stop — none of them punishes you for putting the phone down halfway through.

Sort the Glow, if you like small decisions

A hundred levels, each a handful of jars and a handful of glowing orbs. You pour from one jar into another until every jar holds a single colour. That is the whole game.

It suits short gaps because a level is a level, not a session. Level one is three moves. If the bus comes at move two you lose nothing but a three-move puzzle, and the game remembers the best you have managed on every level you have touched.

There is no timer and no way to lose. If you reach a position with no legal move the game simply tells you, and you undo, restart, or add an extra empty jar. Every one of the hundred levels was checked by a solver before it shipped, so there is no such thing as an unfair one.

Sort the GlowPour glowing orbs between jars until each holds one colour, across 100 calm levels that each brew a potion.Play free in your browser →

Tiny Tower Stack, if you want one thumb and a number to beat

One tap drops a floor onto a tower. That is the entire control scheme, which is why it works one-handed on a crowded platform.

The floors slide back and forth, alternating which direction they approach from, and whatever hangs over the edge gets cut off. Land one almost perfectly and nothing is lost. Get three near-perfect drops in a row and the floor grows back a little, which is the only way out of a narrowing tower.

Your score is how high you got. There is no timer and no level to reach. If the train arrives you simply stop, and your best height is waiting for you.

Tiny Tower StackTap to drop sliding shop floors into a growing tower, and let AI write the founding charter of the town you built.Play free in your browser →

Tunnel Flip, if you want the gap to feel like something

The cube rides the tunnel walls rather than the floor, and the only input is which wall to be on. Tap left, tap right. Barriers and pulsing laser gates come at you.

It is the fastest of the four — a stage runs about a minute or two — and the one where a short gap is most likely to turn into twenty minutes, because there is always a further sector to try. Flipping away from a barrier at the last moment pays a bonus, and bonuses build a multiplier up to five times, so the game actively rewards the kind of risk that is a bad idea on a train.

If you would rather not be tempted, endless mode and the daily run both work the same way.

Tunnel Flip 3DRoll a glowing cube along tunnel walls, flipping left and right to dodge barriers and turn near misses into a combo.Play free in your browser →

Pocket Aquarium, if you want to come back later

The one on this list that is not really about the ten minutes. You keep up to eight fish in a tank, pair them up, and wait for eggs to hatch — about twenty seconds each.

There is no timer, no energy, and no way to lose. You cannot rush it and you cannot ruin it. The interesting part is that every fish has a five-digit code, and the first person in the world to breed a given one keeps its name for good.

Put it on for the wait, check back whenever, breed something rare over lunch.

Pocket AquariumBreed little fish, hatch eggs, and be the first in the world to discover a species nobody has seen before.Play free in your browser →

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None of these will finish in a queue. That is the point. They are built to be interrupted, and Glowbox keeps your progress in your browser — and in your Glowbox account if you sign in — so the next ten minutes can pick up exactly where the last one stopped.