Brilliantly entertaining apps for long-haul flights
Whether you want to be creative, skill up or get your game on, our tech correspondent Craig Grannell shares the best offline apps to download before you fly
17/04/2025
Words: Craig Grannell
Gone are the days of dreary flights where the highlight was a dog-eared paperback or a distant, blurry movie. Today, any smartphone or tablet can transform your journey into an exciting, immersive escape. In fact, we reckon these compelling apps are so good that, once you’re stuck into them, you might not want your flight to end…
Picsart
There are many sketching apps, but this one helps you to make your creations move. The interface is friendly for beginners. Draw an object. Add a frame. Draw your object in a new position, using a faint version of the previous frame as a guide. Repeat – many times. If you really get into the app, take things further with layers, speed options and sound. Even armed with a stylus and artistic ability, you probably won’t craft a masterpiece that will win the next Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. But, hey, you might just make an animated GIF that’ll bring life to your next presentation.
Automatoys
The contraptions in Automotoys evoke cheap plastic toys – the kind where you ping a ball towards a goal. However, this game’s constructions are far more fantastical, with complexity that would give even a Rube Goldberg machine pause. The controls, however, are simple: a single press activates every mechanism in the current toy, as you urge the ball home, while desperately trying to avoid it pinging off into space. Success hinges on precision timing, especially if you’re aiming for three-star perfection. Generously, Automatoys gives you three toys for free. Our advice? Buy the rest (for a one-off fee) before you next fly.
Free. In-app purchases from £2.49/$2.99, Android • £2.99/$2.99, iOS
Freeways
Think road planners are clueless? Reckon you could do better? This quirky game has you use limited digital concrete to scribble out road systems with a finger. At first, all you need is the odd junction or roundabout. But soon, tangled exits and space constraints force you to abandon elegance for chaos that resembles someone having dropped a pile of concrete spaghetti from the clouds. At any moment, you can trigger a traffic simulation. You’ll feel smug when your monstrous creation flows freely. But, even when it doesn’t, you’ll reason causing a traffic jam is a lot more fun than being stuck in one.
Bloom: 10 Worlds
The original Bloom was an early iPhone hit. A living composition, it was part instrument, part Brian Eno soundscape, as you prodded the screen to conjure endlessly evolving visuals and audio from beneath your fingertips. 10 Worlds is the album to Bloom’s single. Each world is distinct, with its own sounds, visuals and objects, ranging from vibrant shards of light to colourful dots that slowly melt into the background. Although the app invites interaction, it can also serve as a unique, Eno-infused meditative tool. Each ‘world’ can be set to play endlessly and an optional timer exists to rouse you after a chosen interval.
80 Days
You’re likely familiar with the Jules Verne classic where Phileas Fogg bets he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. Alas, British Airways is almost a century away in this tale. So, as Fogg’s loyal valet, you must figure out other ways to traverse the globe in a surreal and steampunk 1872, arrive home unscathed and pocket 20 grand. 80 Days plays out as interactive fiction, with breezy prose expanding into a rich web of choices that have real consequences. It’s a superb way to spend your time in the air – while feeling fortunate that your own travels don’t at any point involve clinging on to a giant mechanical elephant.
Seterra Geography
Jet-setting around the globe? Don’t let ‘geographically challenged’ become your tagline. Instead, use this app as a great way to remind yourself of everything, from the precise location of Tuvalu to which flag has a golden bird flying above a rising sun (it’s Kiribati’s). Don’t worry, this isn’t like being at school with a dusty atlas. Instead, you get fun, customisable quizzes where you identify flags and prod at zoomable maps until you land on the correct targets – all against the clock. By the end of your flight, you’ll be flag fluent and a bona fide map master.
Balatro
Tired of the same old card games? But what if you put poker and solitaire in a blender and added a smattering of deck building? Then you’d have something special. In fact, you’d have Balatro. The game has you rack up round-winning scores by playing poker hands. And over time you amass bonus cards that grant abilities and powers that can massively boost your chances. At first, it might all feel too much, but before long you’ll be immersed in the game’s depth, crafting strategies to obliterate previous high scores. Apple Arcade subscribers: note you can grab this one for free as Balatro+.
