Offline Games for Flights, Trains and Dead Zones
How to find phone games that genuinely work with no connection — including the airplane-mode test that catches games which claim to be offline but are not.
The moment you find out a game is not really offline is always the worst possible moment: seat belt fastened, phone in airplane mode, and a spinner where the menu should be.
"Offline" is not a category the stores enforce, so it has to be verified. Here is how to do that, and what usually breaks.
Run the airplane-mode test before you leave
This takes two minutes and settles it completely.
- Install the game while you still have a connection.
- Open it once, all the way into a round. Many games download assets or a configuration file on first launch, and until that finishes they are not really installed.
- Force-close it.
- Turn on airplane mode.
- Open it again and play a full round.
Step five is the one people skip. Plenty of games will open offline, show a menu, and then fail at the moment you actually start — because the ad network, the leaderboard, or the daily challenge needs a call out. Do this at home the night before, not at the gate.
Know which parts break first
Games are rarely wholly online or wholly offline. Usually a few specific systems need the network, and the rest is fine:
- Anything competitive. Real-time matches, matchmaking and ranked ladders need a connection by definition. There is no offline version of playing another person.
- Daily challenges and streaks. These often check a server for the day's puzzle and to record the streak. Some games cache the day's challenge in advance; many do not.
- Leaderboards and cloud saves. Usually fail gracefully and sync later, but check that a failed sync does not block the menu.
- Ad-supported continues. If continuing a run requires watching a video, that continue is unavailable offline. In some games this quietly means shorter sessions.
- The first launch after an update. An update can reset the asset download. If you updated at the airport, re-run the test.
Our own catalogue splits along exactly these lines, and it is worth stating precisely rather than generously. Perihop plays fully offline once installed, including the Daily Orbit runs and in-run missions — there is nothing in it that needs a connection. Action Sudoku is the mixed case: solo puzzles across all five difficulty tiers work offline, but 1v1 matches, co-op and the ranked ladder need a connection, because they involve another person.
What makes a good offline game specifically
Beyond working without a connection, the games that are genuinely good company on a long flight tend to share three properties.
Content that does not run out. A puzzle game with a hundred hand-made levels is a two-hour game. A game with procedurally generated runs or a generated puzzle supply does not run dry over the Atlantic.
Low battery draw. A long flight is a battery-constrained environment. Simple 2D games in portrait, without constant network polling, last dramatically longer than 3D games with a live service attached. If you are down to twenty per cent, a lightweight arcade game buys you far more playtime.
Pausable without penalty. Meal service, turbulence, the person in the middle seat needing to get out. A game you can close mid-run without losing anything is worth more in a plane seat than a better game with a fifteen-minute match length.
A note on downloading before you go
If you are travelling somewhere with expensive data, do the whole cycle on wifi: install, first launch, play one round, check for a pending update. Then turn off automatic updates for the trip, so the app store does not re-download 300 MB the moment you connect at a hotel.
It is also worth installing two games rather than one. The failure mode of a single offline game is not that it stops working — it is that you get bored of it over six hours.
Quick answers
Do offline games still show ads? They can. Some cache ads to display later. A game with no forced ads at all is a safer bet for a flight than one that has simply run out of ads to show.
Does airplane mode with wifi on count? No. If you buy the plane's wifi you are online again, and the test is invalid. Test with everything off.
Can I play sudoku offline? Solo sudoku, yes, and it is one of the better formats for a long trip because the puzzle supply is effectively unlimited. Multiplayer sudoku, no — that needs the other player.
If you want somewhere to start, both of our live games are free and portrait-first, and you can check the exact offline behaviour of each on the games page before you pack.