Enter The Light

Five Minutes. That’s All It Takes.

When your head is full, a small game gives it one simple thing to do. Researchers have been testing this for more than fifteen years, with heart monitors, mood scales and thousands of players. Here is what they found, and how we used it to build these games.

5–10
min

Short Is the Point

The studies that found people feeling better used breaks of five to ten minutes. A review of 22 break studies with more than 2,000 people found that breaks of ten minutes or less gave people more energy and less fatigue. In one game's data, players' mood was still rising fifteen minutes in. So: play a round or two, then get back to your day.

What’s Happening in Your Head

It Breaks the Worry Loop

Stress likes to loop: the same thought, again and again. An absorbing task takes up the attention that the loop runs on. In classic studies, just eight minutes of distraction lifted low mood, while going over the same thoughts kept it low. Games are especially good at this because you have to do something, not just watch.

Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1993 · Bowman & Tamborini, 2012

Just Enough Challenge

People feel best with a game that is neither too easy nor too hard. Too easy is boring; too hard is frustrating. In the sweet spot you slip into flow, where time passes without you noticing. In one study, people waiting for stressful news who reached flow worried less and felt fewer negative emotions.

Bowman & Tamborini, 2012 and 2015 · Rankin, Walsh & Sweeny, 2019

Shapes Crowd Out Pictures

Worries and cravings often arrive as pictures in your mind. Moving shapes around uses the same part of your memory, so there is less room for them. Three minutes of a falling-block puzzle cut cravings for food, coffee and cigarettes, and the same kind of puzzle reduced unwanted images after a distressing film.

Skorka-Brown et al., 2014 and 2015 · Holmes et al., 2010

A Small Win, on Your Terms

Recovering from stress needs a few things: switching off from work, relaxing, a feeling of control, and a small sense of mastery. A good game gives all four in minutes. Enjoyment matters most: in one study, how much people liked the game was strongly linked to how recovered they felt.

Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007 · Ryan, Rigby & Przybylski, 2006 · Collins et al., 2019

Soft Colours, Slow Sounds

Softer, less saturated colours are measurably less arousing than bright reds. Slow music lowers breathing rate and blood pressure, and nature scenes, even on a screen, help people recover from stress. That's why every game here is warm, gentle and quiet, with sound you can turn off in one tap.

Wilms & Oberfeld, 2018 · Bernardi et al., 2006 · de Witte et al., 2020

No Guilt Needed

People who feel guilty about taking a break recover less from it. So take it properly: a few minutes of play is a real pause, not wasted time. When you're done, you're done.

Reinecke, Hartmann & Eden, 2014

What the Studies Found

A few of the experiments behind the ideas above.

2008

A Match-Three Game and Physical Stress

At East Carolina University, adults who played a calm match-three game showed 54% less physical stress, measured by heart-rate variability, than a group browsing the web. All three casual games tested improved mood.

East Carolina University
2017

Five Minutes, Three Kinds of Break

After a tiring task, 66 people took a five-minute break: a casual game, guided relaxation, or quiet rest. Only the game players said they felt better afterwards.

Rupp et al., Human Factors
2019

A Puzzle Game Versus a Meditation App

In a UCL study, ten minutes of a block puzzle left people with more energy than ten minutes of a meditation app or a fidget spinner. Over a working week, people who played felt more and more recovered, while the meditation group felt less.

Collins et al., JMIR Mental Health
2022

Breaks of Ten Minutes or Less

A review of 22 groups and 2,335 people found that short breaks raised energy and lowered fatigue, and that breaks of up to ten minutes worked about as well as each other.

Albulescu et al., PLOS ONE
2024

Mood During Play, 162,000 Times

Oxford researchers asked players of a calm cleaning game how they felt, mid-game, more than 162,000 times. Mood rose as they played, and was higher fifteen minutes in than at the start.

University of Oxford

How We Built These Games

  • Short rounds. Most games settle into a natural pause after a few minutes.
  • Gentle difficulty. Easy to start, and never a sudden wall.
  • A second chance. When a round is about to end, you get one free, gentle way to keep going.
  • Warm colours and soft sound. Dawn colours, slow chimes, one-tap mute everywhere.
  • Play anywhere. Right in your browser, on your phone or your computer.
  • Three kinds of calm. Games to switch off, games to keep your hands busy, and games to think a little.
Play a game

Sources

  1. Russoniello, O'Brien & Parks (2009). The effectiveness of casual video games in improving mood and decreasing stress. ECU news
  2. Rupp et al. (2017). Video games as a break from work. Human Factors. doi.org/10.1177/0018720817715360
  3. Collins, Cox, Wilcock & Sethu-Jones (2019). Digital games and mindfulness apps for recovery after work. JMIR Mental Health. PMC6670275
  4. Albulescu et al. (2022). "Give me a break!" A meta-analysis of micro-breaks. PLOS ONE. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272460
  5. University of Oxford (2024). Positive mood changes during video game play. ox.ac.uk
  6. Skorka-Brown, Andrade, Whalley & May (2015). Playing Tetris decreases drug and other cravings in real world settings. Addictive Behaviors. Plymouth
  7. Skorka-Brown, Andrade & May (2014). Playing Tetris reduces the strength, frequency and vividness of naturally occurring cravings. Appetite. doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.01.073
  8. Holmes et al. (2010). Key steps in developing a cognitive vaccine against traumatic flashbacks. PLOS ONE. PubMed 21085661
  9. Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow (1993). Effects of rumination and distraction on naturally occurring depressed mood. Cognition and Emotion. doi.org/10.1080/02699939308409206
  10. Bowman & Tamborini (2012). Task demand and mood repair: the intervention potential of computer games. New Media & Society. PDF
  11. Rankin, Walsh & Sweeny (2019). A better distraction: exploring the benefits of flow during uncertain waiting periods. Emotion. doi.org/10.1037/emo0000479
  12. Sonnentag & Fritz (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.12.3.204
  13. Ryan, Rigby & Przybylski (2006). The motivational pull of video games. Motivation and Emotion. doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9051-8
  14. Reinecke, Hartmann & Eden (2014). The guilty couch potato. Journal of Communication. ScienceDaily
  15. Wilms & Oberfeld (2018). Color and emotion: effects of hue, saturation, and brightness. Psychological Research. PubMed 28612080
  16. Bernardi, Porta & Sleight (2006). Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music. Heart. doi.org/10.1136/hrt.2005.064600
  17. de Witte et al. (2020). Effects of music interventions on stress-related outcomes. Health Psychology Review. doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2019.1627897