Office Break Games
Offline edition
  • Offline edition: showing your records and the house targets. Nobody else’s — we don’t make those up.
  • Nothing on the books yet. The first score is the easiest record you’ll ever set.
  • Kettle’s on. Pick a game.

Arcade games

12 games ~1–5 min a round Free · no download · scores saved in your browser

Arcade games are the fast ones: a round lasts a few minutes, the rules fit in a sentence, and the score is the whole point. Perfect for a coffee break that has a hard stop.

Everything here runs straight in the browser on keyboard, mouse or touch. Your high scores are saved on your device, and if you set a nickname you can post them to the house leaderboards.

Pick one

All games →

What’s on this shelf

This is the biggest shelf on the floor, and the loudest in spirit. Arcade games are built around one verb — eat, bounce, flap, shoot, cut — repeated until you are better at it than you were on Monday. Rounds are short by design, so a session fits between “back in five” and actually being back in five.

Scores are the whole currency here. Every game has a par (a decent casual result) and a house target (a strong, practised one we set ourselves). Reach par and the Daily Table counts it; beat the house and the card gets a stamp. Nobody is pretending those targets were set by a real player — they are ours, and they are labelled.

  • Snake ~3 min · Easy to learn· since 1976 Two minutes from “just one game” to a new personal best. Or a wall.
  • Breakout ~4 min · Easy to learn· since 1976 Satisfying, loud in spirit, silent in practice. Ideal for open-plan offices.
  • Flappy ~1 min · Brutal· since 2013 Sixty-second rounds. Infinite humility.
  • Asteroids ~4 min · Takes practice· since 1979 Vector-era space combat with momentum you will absolutely misjudge.
  • Boulder Dash ~5 min · Takes practice· since 1984 Eight caves of gravity, greed and very heavy rocks. Dig out from under one and it falls.
  • Firefighter ~5 min · Takes practice A DOS-era flying game where the only thing on fire is the forest, not your calendar.
  • Air Mail ~5 min · Takes practice Sopwith-style loops and a delivery route you can actually finish before lunch.
  • Xonix ~4 min · Takes practice· since 1984 Claim territory one careful cut at a time. Greed is punished instantly.
  • Digger ~5 min · Takes practice· since 1983 The 1983 CGA classic: dig, grab, and never stand under a wobbling bag of gold.
  • Paratrooper ~4 min · Takes practice· since 1982 One turret, endless helicopters, and a score that punishes wasted bullets.
  • Gorillas ~5 min · Easy to learn· since 1991 The QBasic classic. Pass the keyboard and settle the standup properly.
  • Pac-Man ~4 min · Takes practice· since 1980 Four ghosts, four corners, one power pellet away from glory.

Other shelves

Puzzle · 6 Logic · 2 Cards · 1 All games

Questions from the floor

Which arcade game is quickest to play?

Flappy: a round lasts about a minute, often less. Snake and Breakout are the next shortest at two to four minutes. Every card shows a typical round length so you can match the game to the break.

Do the arcade games work on a phone?

Yes. Each one supports touch — swipe to steer in Snake and Xonix, tap to flap, drag the paddle in Breakout — and several show on-screen controls on small screens. Keyboard still works on a laptop.

What is the house target on an arcade card?

A strong, practised score we set for the game’s main mode so there is always something to beat. It is not a record posted by a player. Beat it and the card is stamped “House beaten”; beat par and it says “Above par”.