Dodging Games

Dodging games turn winning upside down: here you score by not touching what's in front of you. It's a huge section, with more than 330 games, and what you have to avoid changes from one to the next: mines, trees, cars, pipes or anything that moves across the screen.

Types you'll run into

The most recognizable is Minesweeper, which has a variant in Buscaminas 2. Here the danger doesn't move: there are hidden mines, and each square you open shows a number telling you how many mines surround it. When you've opened every safe square, you win.

Games where you dodge while moving forward are another family. Ski Free takes you down a ski slope full of obstacles, and Road Crossing has you cross a highway. If you want something with flight, Flap Cat Steampunk follows the Flappy Bird line, with taps that keep you airborne between obstacles.

There are also maze and brain-teaser games, like Ship Maze, Air Maze or Electric Cage, and others with cartoon characters, like Pikachu, Naruto Shuriken or Super Mario Earth Survival.

A little history: Minesweeper came with Windows from version 3.1, in 1992, and for a lot of people it was the first game they opened on a computer. Its charm is that it doesn't depend on reflexes but on deduction. Sometimes no safe clue is left and you have to take a risk: in that case, open the square least likely to hide a mine, based on the surrounding numbers.

Scrolling dodgers like Ski Free or Flap Cat Steampunk are the opposite: no time to think, only to react. If you want calm, stick with Minesweeper; if you want speed, go for these.

Tips

In Minesweeper, start where zeros appear, because they open up on their own. If you see a 1 with only one unopened square around it, you know where the mine is, and flagging it (right-click in most versions) keeps you from stepping on it by accident.

In the dodgers, the typical mistake is moving too much. You almost always need a light tap, not a big move. Learn the obstacle pattern: it tends to repeat, and by the third time you know when they're coming.