Best Time Killing Apps: Piano Tiles 2

It happens to all of us: There you are waiting for a meeting, appointment or maybe just your turn in line at the grocery store and you need more to do than just be patient.

Times like those are why we should all be thankful for technology’s perfect time sink: The mobile app.

But what app to download? Of all the different options out there, which apps are the best for killing a few minutes of spare time?

Piano Tiles 2

This follow-up to the original Piano Tiles game just asks that players tap black keys as they scroll by and nothing else. Occasionally you have to hold your finger on a key or tap two at once, but that’s about it. Tap anything that isn’t a black key and the round is over.

Piano Tiles 2 adds more songs and key types than its predecessor, but what makes the game so much fun hasn’t been touched. The game’s song based levels are all brilliantly designed to immediately make you feel like you have mastered what needs to be done, but things quickly spin out of control forcing you to really up your game if you’re going to beat the hardest levels or even your high score.

While it’s easy to get devoted to the action and find yourself spending hours tapping away at black keys in the hopes of hitting just a couple of more, the design of Piano Tiles 2 is built for only a few minutes of play at a time. Your average song can be beaten in just a couple of minutes and from there it’s on to the infinite portion where you see how many keys you can hit until failure.

The mechanics of Piano Tile 2 are simple enough to instantly pick up and put down as you please. Even better, the way that it completely absorbs you into the experience of hitting every key perfectly creates a zen-like state that can make a few minutes go by in an instant.

You’ll likely find that five minutes isn’t enough time with Piano Tiles 2 given how much there is to unlock and the many ways it lets you improve your efforts, but it’s a game that is at its very best when you just need something to pick up and play during those dull downtime moments we all face.

Piano Tiles 2 is available free on the App Store for devices running iOS 7.0 or later.