Zen Bound

All tied up.

Source // MobyGames

Keeping your hands busy in a world without fidget spinners can be tricky for someone who wants to do something, but doesn't want to do something too involved. Just idly fiddling with something for no real purpose other than to play, chill out, and pass the time is something I can get behind, depending on the something, I suppose.

In 2009, if you had an iOS device and wanted to chill out in such a way, you might have opted for the wrap 'em up that is Zen Bound, a simple little puzzler where you just wind a piece of string around objects.

That's it, nothing more taxing than that, but you can bet it gets thinker than you would have initially thought.

Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid

Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling.

Source // Apple

The iPhone, iPod Touch, and later iPad did absolute wonders not just for mobile gaming, but for new ways of playing games using accelerometers and touchpads. While you could thoroughly enjoy playing LocoRoco on the PlayStation Portable, nudging shoulder buttons to rotate the planet you're playing on just isn't the same as rotating an entire device to solve a puzzle involving similarly circular childlike blobs in Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid.

The Kingdom of Rolando has been infected by the Kilgorean Flu, and only the Golden Orchid can save the day. Enter Sir Richard and his skilled underlings, and you, some sort of overlord that manipulates the world around them so that they can platform their way to success.

Have you got what it takes to help Rolando out?

One-Dot Enemies

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Source // Apple

The 1001 list isn't afraid to put time-wasters in the limelight, but many of them so far - if they've really not had anything else to offer gamers - have been artsy enough to get by without too many problems.

Noby Noby Boy, for example, is a 'game' about stretching until you're bored of stretching, then contributing your score to a collective goal. That's all, really, but its presentation is just as much of a talking point as its 'gameplay'.

But One-Dot Enemies is something else. It's Noby Noby Boy to the extreme, and it goes a little something like this...

Trism

Why would I need an accelerometer?

Source // MobyGames

It doesn't look like much, does it, but then you have to say that about all successful handheld puzzle games. Tetris. Bejeweled. Trism.

Emerging on the early iPhone, gravity-based match-three puzzler Trism was unlike anything else, completely changed the developer's life, and, like many puzzle games, will make your head grind to a halt.