Boring games

The most boring games.

A short list of games that have made boredom their whole point. We're aware of the irony of recommending them, and of the conflict of interest in the last entry.

Desert Bus

Desert Bus may be the purest example. Made as part of an unreleased Penn & Teller game for the Sega CD, it has you drive a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas in real time. That's eight hours of straight road, the bus pulls to the right, and you can't pause. Finishing earns one point. It later became the basis for Desert Bus for Hope, a charity marathon that has raised millions of dollars.

The Most Boring Game Ever

The Most Boring Game Ever is a free download on Steam that describes itself as a clicker experiment to give you the feeling of being bored. The title sets expectations responsibly.

It is as if you were doing work

It is as if you were doing work, by Pippin Barr, turns the look of office software into a game. It's an odd and rather thoughtful one, for anyone who misses their job.

Do Nothing for 2 Minutes

Do Nothing for 2 Minutes asked you to leave your mouse and keyboard alone for two minutes, and restarted if you touched them. It was a hit, reportedly drawing two million visitors in its first week. The old address now leads to Calm, the meditation company behind it, so it's more of a piece of history.

The Button

The Button was a Reddit experiment: a countdown that reset whenever anyone pressed a button, which each person could do only once. It drew over a million clicks and ended in 2015, so you can only read about it now.

Don't Close the Tab

That's ours. You open a tab, get on with your day, and answer when the phone rings every 1 to 5 minutes. Miss one call and it's over. It's free, it runs in your browser, and you can start holding now. If you'd rather be bored for a fixed period, try our vigilance test.