Plain and Simple Games

Thirty games. No advertisements, no subscription, no account, nothing about you collected. Sudoku, solitaire, mahjong, minesweeper and twenty-six more.

Thirty games. No ads, nothing to download after you install it.

Sudoku, Solitaire, Free Cell, Spider, Mahjong, Minesweeper, Crossword, Word Search, Five in Six, Bridges, Loop, Cross Sums, Five Dice, Colour Sort, Parking Lot, Nonogram, Connect, 2048, Block Fit, Echo, Twin, Span, Four Up, Dots and Boxes, Match Up, Low Twelve, Navigating the USA, Cross Off, Three Streets, Fifty Plates.

WHY THIS EXISTS

The usual ways of making an app pay for itself are the same things that make apps unpleasant. Ads need your attention. Subscriptions need you locked in.

So this one doesn't. No advertisements, no purchases, no subscription, no "watch a video for a hint", no account required, and nothing about you collected. No analytics, and no third-party code in it at all.

NOTHING HERE NEEDS A LUCKY GUESS

Minesweeper, nonograms and bridges are each worked through before you are given them, using only the moves a person actually makes. Any board that would come down to a coin flip is thrown away and another grown. If you are stuck, there is a deduction available somewhere — unlike most free versions, where being stuck is sometimes the game's fault and you can never tell which.

SUDOKU

Four difficulties, and the labels mean something: most free sudoku apps decide "hard" by counting how many numbers they give you at the start, which is close to meaningless. This one solves each puzzle the way a person would, technique by technique, and labels it by the work that actually took. Pencil marks, unlimited undo, an optional timer, and a hint that explains the next step in plain English rather than just filling the square in.

FIVE IN SIX

Guess the five-letter word in six tries. Everyone gets the same word each day, worked out from the date on your own device rather than fetched from anywhere, so it works with no signal at all. Unlimited practice, and a hard mode. The tiles use colour and shape together, so the board reads correctly if you can't tell green from yellow.

MAHJONG

A hundred and forty-four tiles, taken away in matching pairs. Every board is built backwards from a finished one, so every board can be cleared — a board you get stuck on went wrong during play, and the app says so.

WORD SEARCH

Eight themed words in a ten-by-ten grid, running in any of eight directions. Play with the list on show, or with only the theme, where it fills itself in as you find them and the last two are genuinely hard. The grids are written by hand rather than generated.

BRIDGES

Islands joined up so each has exactly the bridges it asks for. None may cross, and everything has to end up joined into one single network — the rule that makes it a thinking game rather than a counting one. A board can satisfy every island and still be wrong.

AND FIFTEEN MORE

Klondike solitaire and Free Cell, draw one or draw three where it applies, with an honest "no moves left". Spider with one, two or four suits. Loop and Cross Sums dailies, each board proved to have exactly one answer before it ships. Echo, Twin and Span — sequence, pairs and recall, with no claim about what they do for you. A five-by-five crossword a day, its clues written by hand. Five dice, colour sort, a car park a day, nonograms, connect, 2048 and block fit. And seven two-player games that share one iPad.

YOUR SHELF, YOUR GAMES

Switch off any game you don't play and its card leaves the home screen. Nothing is deleted — stats, streaks and half-finished boards stay where they were.

A scorecard sits behind all thirty: streaks, best and average times, and a calendar of the days you played.

ON YOUR DEVICES

Your stats and half-finished games follow you to your iPad on their own, through your own iCloud. They don't pass through a Plain and Simple server, because there isn't one.

Sign in with Apple is optional and separate, and asks Apple for no name and no email.

PLAIN AND SIMPLE

Small apps that do one thing, and don't ask for anything.

help@plainandsimple.app