Doodle Jump

The Doodler never stops bouncing, and neither, somehow, do you. The whole game fits on a sheet of graph paper. You play a little four-legged doodle that bounces upward from platform to platform without ever pausing, and your only jobs are steering and not falling. Tilt the phone to drift left or right — wrap around the edge of the screen and you reappear on the other side — and tap to shoot the monsters in your way.

The climb keeps changing its tricks. Platforms crack, slide, vanish and occasionally explode. Springs and trampolines fling you higher, and the good pickups are better still: propeller hats, jet packs and rockets that turn a careful climb into a rocket ride past whole sections. In the gaps between platforms wait UFOs, black holes and a parade of monsters, any of which ends the run if you touch it — or fall, which is how most runs end.

Themed worlds redecorate the notebook: Ninja, Space, Jungle, Soccer, Underwater, Snow, Halloween, Frozen Ice, Easter and Pirates all swap the scenery and the hazards. More than a hundred missions hand out rewards for specific feats, and the margins of the page carry other players' score markers, so every climb turns into a quiet race against names you pass on the way up. Global leaderboards and achievements sit behind it all.

Doodle Jump was named a Best of 2015 title by Google Play's editors, and its appeal has never really dated. A run takes a minute or two, the controls are a tilt and a tap, and the score is always just beatable enough to justify one more go.