Playing games on a smartwatch might seem impractical with its tiny display. But after trying it, I find it’s an excellent way to kill some time while waiting at the dentist’s office.

1 Snake

Yes, you can play the classic Snake game on your Samsung Galaxy Watch. Unfortunately, the developers have decided to make it a paid title. Also, graphically, it’s very minimal to the point that in a freeze-frame, you can’t even tell heads from tails—literally.

That said, if you were a proud owner of a Nokia feature phone from the 2000s, this will take you on a trip down memory lane. The controls feel super responsive, and the small display doesn’t take away from the fun. You can also change the color of the board, enable or disable walls, and even tweak the snake’s speed. Overall, this is an excellent option if you’re looking for a simple game to kill some time without taking out your phone.

2 Tic Tac Toe

Next, we have another classic game—Tic Tac Toe. You can play against a friend where both of you take turns tapping on the screen to insert Xs and Os in a 3×3 grid to try and connect three! Alternatively, you can also play against the computer, configure it to go first (or second), and increase its difficulty so it always plays the best move.

If you already don’t know the best strategy, then this can be fun, or else it can be boring as it will end in a series of draws.

3 2048

If you played 2048 before, you can expect an almost identical experience with this version designed for smartwatches. Despite the small display, the controls are super responsive. I faced no issues as I swiped up, down, left, and right, trying to combine matching numbers and hit that elusive 2048 tile.

4 Touch Round

Touch Round plays like a retro top-down racing game for your smartwatch. It’s a fun game, and I’m sure you’ll love it if you have fond memories of playing old-school NES or SEGA titles like Super Sprint.

The car can automatically accelerate, and your job is to touch the display to steer the car along the track. There are a total of 23 different racetracks and two different game modes—Time, where you try to complete the track as fast as possible, and Race, where you race against other computer-operated cars. You also have different cars to choose from, with varying velocity and agility—five of which are free and around 40 paid variants.

5 Dial Pilot

Dial Pilot is an ambitious arcade-style flying game where you control a biplane, navigate it through hoops, collect coins in the air, and shoot down enemies. You can steer it left and right by tapping on the screen, or you can rotate your finger around the bezel to steer it. This makes the title particularly entertaining to play if you own a Classic series Galaxy Watch with a rotating bezel.

For free, you have two maps—Speed Tunnel and the Tutorial Map. There are three more premium maps—Flight Arena, Valley, and Egypt, which offer a pleasant change of scenery.

6 Energy: Anti-Stress Loops

Infinity Loop is my go-to stress-buster on my phone, so I was happy to find it’s available for my Galaxy Watch as well. It’s a very simple and minimalist game where you need to rotate tiles to create a track that connects an energy source to a light bulb. The controls are simple, as you tap on the screen to rotate the tiles. In a few rare instances, I did find it a bit difficult to tap on the correct tile, especially when there are a lot of tiles on the screen. At its heart, this is a puzzle game, but what makes it appealing is its use of soothing colors and background music, which creates a relaxing ambiance.

7 Single Tap Games

Single Tap Games brings you a collection of four quality mini-games—Goat Escape, Candy Land, Mini Soccer, and Simon. That said, each of these comes with its own unique identity and is a solid time killer. Goat Escape plays like a stripped-down version of Gravity Guy where you tap the screen to flip gravity and jump between the top and bottom platform to avoid obstacles and progress as far as possible. Candy Land is a Knife Hit clone, where the knife and wooden logs are replaced with candy. Mini Soccer is probably the most challenging of the four, where you try to dribble a soccer ball away from the defenders and then score a goal. Finally, you have Simon, the classic memory game where you need to hit four colors in exactly the same sequence (which gets increasingly longer) as shown by the computer.

8 Cactus Run: The Dino’s Revenge

Cactus Run is another mini-game collection where the title is also the main game. It’s like a clone of the Dinosaur game on the Chrome browser, but instead of a dinosaur jumping over a cacti, you play as a running cactus that needs to jump over incoming dinosaurs. That said, you don’t necessarily need to be a cactus and can switch to different characters like a dinosaur or even a gorilla.

Now, if you grow tired of playing this, you can explore some of the other mini-games, like Goat Run, Dino Merge, Gold Ninja, just to name a few. I didn’t play all the games, but the ones I tried weren’t very good and had janky controls.

9 Speed Math Mental Quick Games

And last but not least, we have a brain game focused on making quick calculations. It’s a really well-designed game with a clever user interface. The display is divided into four equal quadrants, showing potential solutions to the equation in the middle. Your job is to pick the correct answer to solve the equation as quickly as possible. The more correct answers you get in two minutes (increase or decrease time in settings), the higher your score.

To make the game harder or simpler, you can select the number range for the equation. By default, it is 1-99. You can also pick what type of math operations to show during the challenge—additions, subtractions, multiplications, or divisions, and even pick what type of problems you want: a+?=c, a+b=?, or ?+b=c.

And there you have it—nine games to play on your Samsung Galaxy Watch while waiting at the doctor’s office or anywhere else. This is just a glimpse of what’s available on wearOS devices, and there are plenty more games out there, so I apologize if I missed some of your favorites.