Smartwatches are the latest revolutionary gadget the tech industry has developed. It came after computers and smartphones who ran apps that could do just about anything. These included tracking sleep and other health metrics, although only in basic form. To get the advanced stats and track your health better, you need a smartwatch.
Equipped with smart sensors that track your heartbeat, smartwatches are a great way to take control over your health. They have tiny screens but look very chic on your wrist, especially with thousands of cool watches to choose from. Every smart gadget that comes out these days is tested for gaming, and smartwatches are no exception.
Yes, it doesn’t make sense to game on such a small screen, but developers like these third-party projects that allow them to install and play games on a smartwatch. Fun times, right?
Is Gaming Possible on a Smartwatch?
In short – yes, it is. Since smartwatches run on operating systems such as Google’s Wear OS, it would be easy to port a video game to it. You know how the great DOOM and DOOM II needed beefy PCs in the past to run the game? Well, those games have now been ported to run on mid-range smartphones. Some have even ported versions for smartwatches, but those are only experimental tries. With that being said, there are many games optimized for your smartwatch if that’s your forte.
While gaming on a tiny device is a bit hard, we can’t deny the fact that it’s fun. You can spin slots such as Sweet Bonanza with simplified controls and kill some free time with ease. Sure, you’ll most likely miss some of the controls when you play on your smartwatch, but that’s part of the fun (unless you’re playing for real money.
And it’s not just slots that have been ported to smartwatches. You’ve surely tried the popular puzzle game with blocks 2048 on your iPhone. It works perfectly on Wear OS devices, and is actually one of the simpler smartwatch games you can play. It works fine without crashes, and it’s free to install via Google Play Pass.
Puzzle games such as 2048 and Infinite Loop are the most suitable for smartwatches as they don’t’ have too many controls and are simple to play. If you were hoping to play Crysis on your smartwatch, you obviously can’t. Plus, we doubt that there’s hardware in this smart category to run it properly. On the other hand, puzzle games and turn-based RPGs are easier to port and not that hard on your smartwatch, so you can enjoy them anytime and anywhere.
Is It Worth It?
We’re not going to lie – the concept of playing games on a smartwatch is pretty cool. Decades ago, we couldn’t imagine playing games without a PC or a console. In the meantime, processing power and hardware have evolved so much that games can now run on smartwatches. Insane, right?
They can run on pretty much anything with a powerful processor. Witcher 3 has been ported on Tesla 3’s dashboard touchscreen device. Of course, you shouldn’t play games while you drive, but you can try it when you’re parked. Also, don’t play games on your smartwatch while you walk – you could easily get bumped into someone, or worse, something and hurt yourself.
But the sole concept of gaming on a smartwatch is fun. The industry already knows that it’s possible to run games on these devices, and will surely be actively working on improving the experience. If you ask us, big-screen gaming smartwatches are coming soon – it happened with smartphones and it’ll happen with watches too.
