Hundreds

Hundreds is a minimalist puzzle whose rule fits in a single sentence: you touch circles on the screen, they start to inflate, and you must bring their sum to exactly one hundred without letting any two enlarged circles touch each other or hit the edge of the playing field. The slightest slip — holding a finger down a fraction of a second too long, or picking the wrong order — and the round ends in failure, making every level a short but intense exercise in concentration.

The game launched in 2013 from Semi Secret Software and belonged to a wave of mobile puzzle titles that deliberately returned to pure, geometric simplicity instead of colorful characters and story frameworks. As the game progresses, further mechanics are added — circles that move, that need to be kept active longer, or that react to multiple fingers at once — so a surprisingly wide range of puzzles can be built from this simple principle. Multi-finger touch control also makes good use of what touchscreens can do that a mouse and keyboard cannot.

The visual style is deliberately spare — black background, colored circles, minimal text and interface, so all attention goes to the mechanic itself. This cleanliness helped the game stand out in a crowded store full of visually louder titles and also gave it long-lasting appeal, since this kind of minimalism doesn't age the way period-specific graphics do. It's precisely this reduction to a single mechanic without distracting elements that makes Hundreds a title that holds up well even after years, without feeling dated.

Why play it: anyone who likes short, elegant puzzles without unnecessary trimmings and wants a game that can be played in short breaks will find exactly that kind of title in Hundreds.