15 Fun Games for the Bored Designer

Do you find it difficult to find an excuse to take a break from your designing duties? If so, these fiendishly addictive design games are for you. Each one is ideal to play during your coffee break, no matter how short it is. And if any one asks, you can tell them that these games help hone your design instincts and sharpen your skills. Seriously.

In this post are 15 addictive games that test your knowledge on things related to design: fonts and kerning, colors and hues, hex codes, site layouts and more. Race against the time and compare scores with your fellow designers, and most of all, have some fun.

Kolor

Think you know magenta from fuchsia or snow from ivory? Here’s a chance to test your eye for subtle shade differences as you race against the clock to identify the correct design color in this great game from Kolor.

Kern Type

Laying out text evenly on the page, or ‘kerning’ as it’s known in the typography business, is harder than it looks. However, as any self-respecting designer will tell you, it’s integral to creating slick content on the page.

Shape Type

There’s a fine art to shaping letters, especially when you want to create an aesthetically pleasing image on the screen. Test your skills with this fun, tablet-compatible game. IT’s harder than it looks.

Hex Invaders

Whoever said that hex codes were fairly useless in terms of everyday skills obviously never played this game! It’s based on the classic arcade game, but with a cunning design twist, of course. To destroy the invaders, you’ll need to match the supplied hex code that appears on the top of the screen.

The Bezier game

Ever struggled to draw things in your designs with the pen tool? With Bezier, you get a tutorial that shows you how to use the pen tool to draw several shapes. Just copy the steps to quickly master the pen tool. Replay the tutorial if you find yourself at a loss.

RGB challenge

Are you an RGB code master, or do you struggle to get your head around remembering them? If you think you’re a bit of a color expert, here’s the game to test your skills to the max. Make no mistakes, because any mistake sends you back to the beginning. See if you can beat your best score!

Brandseen

Brandseen gives you the chance to combine your knowledge of some of the world’s most famous brands with your color identification prowess. You’ll be shown 9 of the most iconic logos, and you’ll need to use your supreme design-jedi master skills to match the right color to the logo design.

color

Now it’s time to get serious about testing your color knowledge. This simple, yet comprehensive test challenges your eye in finding the right shade. You’ll need to identify complementary colors, analogous hues, triadic, tetradic and saturation.Or just try to get the color in the middle circle right. Good luck!

Odd one out

Here’s a nice color recognition game with a twist. You’ll need to find the odd one out each time, but be warned, the game gets progressively trickier! It’s a great way to train your eyes to get used to subtle differences between hues, which is always useful when designing a site.

Color Run

If you think you’re good at picking up subtle color differences, then this game tests how effective you are at identifying the lighter color, against a ticking clock. You’ll need to have lightning reflexes and quick fingers to score well, and it’s a good game to compete with friends.

Pixel perfect

Pixactly is the game that assesses how well you really know your pixels. All you’ve got to do is draw a box that matches the width and height dimensions given, and see how close you get to the right answer. Sounds easy, right? There’s only one way to find out.

Online Color challenge

According to the statistics included on this site, 1 in 255 women and 1 in 12 men have some sort of color vision deficiency. No matter your gender, we suspect you’ll find this color sorting game quite challenging!

The Rather Difficult Font Game

As designers, we use fonts all the time. So why are the names so hard to remember? If you’re constantly finding that the name of the perfect font that is just at the tip of your tongue, here’s a game to help improve your knowledge and understand the subtle differences between font styles.

Dedesign The Web 2

It’s amazing how instantly recognizable some websites are, just from their layout. This fascinating quiz proves the point perfectly, though you’ll also be amazed at how many you recognize, but aren’t quite sure which site they are!

Shoot the serif

Select your level of design skill, then shoot only the serif fonts in order to get promoted. It’s an addictive shoot-em-down style game that helps you easily identify serif fonts. Just make sure you leave the sans serif standing!

We hope you enjoyed your break, had a lot of fun, and even learned something new! What’s your favorite game? Do you know any other great design quizzes, tricky experiments, or challenging apps? Do share your scores, achievements, and thoughts!

Editor’s note: This is written by Lana Lozovaya for Hongkiat.com Lana is the content strategist and social media manager at PSD2HTML®, the leading PSD to HTML and web development company.

Now Read:
40 Addictive Web Games Powered By HTML5

15 Fun Games for the Bored Designer

15 Fun Games for the Bored Designer

Do you find it difficult to find an excuse to take a break from your designing duties? If so, these fiendishly addictive design games are for you. Each one is ideal to play during your coffee break, no matter how short it is. And if any one asks, you can tell them that these games help hone your design instincts and sharpen your skills. Seriously.

In this post are 15 addictive games that test your knowledge on things related to design: fonts and kerning, colors and hues, hex codes, site layouts and more. Race against the time and compare scores with your fellow designers, and most of all, have some fun.

Kolor

Think you know magenta from fuchsia or snow from ivory? Here’s a chance to test your eye for subtle shade differences as you race against the clock to identify the correct design color in this great game from Kolor.

Kern Type

Laying out text evenly on the page, or ‘kerning’ as it’s known in the typography business, is harder than it looks. However, as any self-respecting designer will tell you, it’s integral to creating slick content on the page.

Shape Type

There’s a fine art to shaping letters, especially when you want to create an aesthetically pleasing image on the screen. Test your skills with this fun, tablet-compatible game. IT’s harder than it looks.

Hex Invaders

Whoever said that hex codes were fairly useless in terms of everyday skills obviously never played this game! It’s based on the classic arcade game, but with a cunning design twist, of course. To destroy the invaders, you’ll need to match the supplied hex code that appears on the top of the screen.

The Bezier game

Ever struggled to draw things in your designs with the pen tool? With Bezier, you get a tutorial that shows you how to use the pen tool to draw several shapes. Just copy the steps to quickly master the pen tool. Replay the tutorial if you find yourself at a loss.

RGB challenge

Are you an RGB code master, or do you struggle to get your head around remembering them? If you think you’re a bit of a color expert, here’s the game to test your skills to the max. Make no mistakes, because any mistake sends you back to the beginning. See if you can beat your best score!

Brandseen

Brandseen gives you the chance to combine your knowledge of some of the world’s most famous brands with your color identification prowess. You’ll be shown 9 of the most iconic logos, and you’ll need to use your supreme design-jedi master skills to match the right color to the logo design.

color

Now it’s time to get serious about testing your color knowledge. This simple, yet comprehensive test challenges your eye in finding the right shade. You’ll need to identify complementary colors, analogous hues, triadic, tetradic and saturation.Or just try to get the color in the middle circle right. Good luck!

Odd one out

Here’s a nice color recognition game with a twist. You’ll need to find the odd one out each time, but be warned, the game gets progressively trickier! It’s a great way to train your eyes to get used to subtle differences between hues, which is always useful when designing a site.

Color Run

If you think you’re good at picking up subtle color differences, then this game tests how effective you are at identifying the lighter color, against a ticking clock. You’ll need to have lightning reflexes and quick fingers to score well, and it’s a good game to compete with friends.

Pixel perfect

Pixactly is the game that assesses how well you really know your pixels. All you’ve got to do is draw a box that matches the width and height dimensions given, and see how close you get to the right answer. Sounds easy, right? There’s only one way to find out.

Online Color challenge

According to the statistics included on this site, 1 in 255 women and 1 in 12 men have some sort of color vision deficiency. No matter your gender, we suspect you’ll find this color sorting game quite challenging!

The Rather Difficult Font Game

As designers, we use fonts all the time. So why are the names so hard to remember? If you’re constantly finding that the name of the perfect font that is just at the tip of your tongue, here’s a game to help improve your knowledge and understand the subtle differences between font styles.

Dedesign The Web 2

It’s amazing how instantly recognizable some websites are, just from their layout. This fascinating quiz proves the point perfectly, though you’ll also be amazed at how many you recognize, but aren’t quite sure which site they are!

Shoot the serif

Select your level of design skill, then shoot only the serif fonts in order to get promoted. It’s an addictive shoot-em-down style game that helps you easily identify serif fonts. Just make sure you leave the sans serif standing!

We hope you enjoyed your break, had a lot of fun, and even learned something new! What’s your favorite game? Do you know any other great design quizzes, tricky experiments, or challenging apps? Do share your scores, achievements, and thoughts!

Editor’s note: This is written by Lana Lozovaya for Hongkiat.com Lana is the content strategist and social media manager at PSD2HTML®, the leading PSD to HTML and web development company.

Now Read:
40 Addictive Web Games Powered By HTML5

15 Fun Games for the Bored Designer

10 Minimal iOS Games to Kill Boredom

I have to confess, I love minimal iOS games. I enjoy the cleverness needed to create something engaging, yet so simple. While I like elaborate games like Civilization, there is so much content and depth it actually seems easier to make something great. With the limited resources and screen real-estate of iOS devices, simpler yet well-made games are in the forefront. In this article I’ll show you some of my favourite ones.

I tried to put in a fair mix of free and paid games, although I am personally a strong believer of paid apps. I think ideally all apps should be free – so anyone can benefit – but those who have the means should pay for them. Until then, I think that supporting excellent games by paying for them is the best route to take.

1. Into The Circle

Into the Circle has a perfect difficulty progression curve, a pleasant design and is impossible to put down. I grabbed my phone just now to take a screenshot and I ended up playing for 10 minutes trying to beat my high score of 411.

The aim is to get your puck into the target area. The aim goes left-right, you need to press down at the correct time to get the puck in the right direction. The longer you press down, the harder your "throw" and the farther the puck will travel.

The app is mostly ad-supported and you can buy stars that allow you to resume the game if you don’t make it to the target. If you don’t mind the occasional video ad which takes away 15 seconds of your life this game is perfectly enjoyable without buying stars.

Download: iOS (Free)

2. Hoplite

Hoplite is an example of a game I probably wouldn’t have bought without the overwhelmingly positive reviews out there. While not super-expensive, at .99 it sounds a bit pricey for a simple chess-like game. Thank goodness I was swayed by the review — it is one of the best puzzle/dungeon crawler games I’ve played.

The aim of Hoplite is to get your character through each level of a dungeon. Along the way you’ll progress by selecting various abilities that will give you an edge over enemies. Where hoplite shines is way you interact with enemies. You need to position yourself just right, especially in later levels.

You might be able to kill two enemies with one blow now, but that might mean you’ll get hit by an arrow by a third enemy. Some skills allow you to get rid of minions by moving around them, jumping next to them, throwing your speak, etc. Once you’re through the first 5-6 levels you’ll be taking extensive thinking breaks while you figure out your next move.

Download: iOS (.99) | Android ()

3. MUJO

MUJO is a refreshing take on the tile collection genre. It adds RPG elements by allowing you to level up your three heroes or even replace them with new ones periodically along the way.

The goal is to kill the monster which you can do by inflicting hit points by collecting swords. Hold 3 or more to create a stack. You can keep on stacking to gain big points. Finally, tap three or more to expend the accumulated hit points and damage the monster.

You can stack other types of tiles giving you different bonuses, and use your unique hero skills to affect the board. In-app purchases can give you more lightning (which can be used to open chests/get rid of tiles) but you really don’t need them in order to enjoy the game.

MUJO is a game where I get the feeling that the creators wanted to make a great game first and make money second, not the other way around. The music is crazy addictive; it will stay in your head for hours. You’ve been warned.

Download: iOS (Free) | Android (Free)

4. Noodles!

Noodles! is a rehash of a familiar concept – join together branching tubes to create a closed system. You earn points based on the number of moves and the time spent on each puzzle. The familiar concept is executed in a visually pleasing manner with nice, smooth pastel colors. Some variation is added by different shaped tiles — hexagons can be confusing!

I like the zen nature of this game and since it’s a paid app there are no distracting ads or in-app purchases to worry about. Larger outlets haven’t reviewed it yet but smaller blogs seem to like the game universally so far.

Download: iOS (Free)

5. Zengrams

Tangram is a very old game, supposedly dating back more than 1,000 years to the Song Dynasty in China. The goal is to match an outline with seven shapes which cannot overlap. Sounds easy, but some puzzles can be devilishly difficult. Zengrams adds a mind-bending layer to this by actually allowing overlaps – in fact, it requires them for many puzzles.

The final goal in zengrams is to match the outline of the shape on the board. The colors of the tiles you use doesn’t matter as far as filling out the shape, but they gain new meaning when you make tiles overlap. You can split and combine shapes to create new shapes which you can move independently.

The genius of this mechanic is that sometimes it’s a huge help but sometimes it hinders you — you have to find a way around splitting shapes because you have a limited amount of moves you can make.

Download: iOS (.99) | Android (.33).

6. Smove

A game of skill which only requires you to move a dot in a 3×3 grid sounds like it will either be crazy hard or way too easy. Smove manages to find middle ground, up to maybe level 4-5. You control a white puck on a 3×3 board, your goal is to grab the square which is placed in one of the cells. While trying to get to the square you’ll need to doge the evil black circles racing toward you.

It starts off nice and comfy but gets more difficult after every tenth successful retrieval of the square. Smove is not a game for the long haul, I don’t think you’ll find yourself playing it consistently for days on end. It is however a great distraction for standing in line, waiting for someone to get ready or just a quick fix during the day.

Download: iOS (Free) | Android (Free)

7. KEY – 3D Cubic Puzzle

This game is all about spacial navigation: the goal is to complete a cube by placing the shapes inside the correct holes. It’s exactly like those shape recognition games for toddlers but much, much harder.

Your cube has a shape missing on each side. On the top of the screen you see a shape and you need to rotate your cube to get the correct hole on top. This would be easy enough if you wouldn’t run out of time really, really fast.

Time counts down continuously but you gain time for fitting each piece. If you fit the pieces by rotating the cube horizontally, you gain 1 second; if you rotate it vertically from the front, you gain 2 seconds, and from the back, you gain 3 seconds.

This game frustrates me more than any other on this list because of the time crunch combined with the “I almost had it” factor. Sometimes you know where a piece would fit but you just can’t seem to rotate the cube there. In other words: I’m horrible at spacial navigation.

Download iOS (Free)

8. rop

rop is a minimal puzzle game where you have to create a specific shape with the help of a rope. It’s a very zen experience which is achieved through visual, game and sound design. The visual design is mellow monochrome, the sound design features a meditative soundscape with subtle tings indicating actions, and the game design is completely chill with no time or move goals.

The single detracting thing from it all is the comparatively loud shrill the game emits when you try and place two junctions on the same tile. Making the patterns is a matter of untangling your rope, figuring out which junctions to put where and how some ropes should lay over others. All in all, it’s a very pleasing combination.

Download: iOS (.19)

9. Planet Quest

This isn’t the best game on the list but it’s the one I’ve played most. I love rhythm games but very few have been well executed so far. Planet Quest somehow defies all logic for me.

It has a quirky art style which I don’t particualry like on its own, there is no licenced music in it and some of the levels, like the metal planet can be downright evil. Somehow, putting all this together just works for me, it’s a game I can’t put down.

The music in the game is catchy and is wildy varied. After a few weeks of playing every day I still heard unfamiliar tunes in there. For me the difficulty level is also just right. You’ll need to have a decent sense of rhythm to stand any chance in this game and as you survive for longer and longer, the music speeds up.

Download: iOS (Free)

10. Puk

Puk is similar to Into The Circle from a game mechanics point of view, yet is a quite different experience overall. Pull back your puck, aim and release to hit your targets. Targets vary in size, number and position, sometimes hiding behind walls. On most levels you’ll have more than one puck and target and you have a limited time to get them all.

The game is utilitarian, a dual tone orange/white color scheme dominates with simple lines and circles making up the majority of what you see. It can be a little repetitive but overall it provides a lot of fun. I find myself coming back to Puk every few months for a new round!

Download: iOS (.99) | Android (.49)

Now Read:
20 Highly Addictive Mobile Games You Have to Try

10 Minimal iOS Games to Kill Boredom