8 TikTok games that are almost always playing in the background on my FYP

TikTok is a great platform for discovering any number of things, including recycled clips from other creators or even iconic scenes from Family Guy. These clips, however, are often played side-by-side or above footage from a type of mobile game.

Otfen, these games feature an infinite runner at sub-par gameplay skill — so much so that if the video is long enough or actually an ad for the game, you’ll likely want to play for yourself. The dilemma is that these games are often unidentifiable, aside from the vague idea of “a knife flying through the air and cutting things.” However, these TikTok attention-grabber games actually are discoverable on the app store if you know where to look.

1 Slice It All!

The aforementioned flying knife game

Slice It All!/ Pocket-lint

Slice It All!

Developer

Voodoo

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

Yes

First up is Slice It All! It’s not really that exciting, the exclamation mark is just part of the name — but it is pretty fun. The game is simple enough, with you simply tapping the screen to send a knife sailing through the air. The objective is just to slice anything and everything in your path. The end of each course has a kind of bonus wall where, rather than slicing, you try to stick the tip of the knife into a score multiplier.

With some skill, you can get that satisfaction on your own within the game. The only real downside is the ads. This applies to almost every one of these kinds of TikTok attention-grabbing games. And, to the credit of Slice It All!, its ads aren’t nearly as bad as some other games.

2 Count Master

Finally, you can run through the right gate

Count Master/ Pocket-lint

Count Master

Developer

Freeplay LLC

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

Yes

Among all the games you might regularly see hastily slapped to the side of a stolen video on TikTok, one genre truly stands out: runners. They all look a little different, and have a different general gameplay conceit. One of the more popular gimmicks seen among these runners is one where the player has to run through gates. These gates can do any number of things depending on the game, but in the case of Count Master, it’s all about upping the size of your little group of guys.

If you’ve watched a TikTok where you painfully watched someone run through a divided by 2 gate instead of the minus 20 gate that would’ve (objectively) been better, Count Master can finally allow you to experience the catharsis you need… with ad breaks throughout.

3 Popsicle Stack

Making desserts, and running

Popsicle stick/ Pocket-lint

Popsicle Stack

Developer

Lion Studios

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

Yes

Yet another runner, but this time it’s all about making popsicles. Rather than dodging obstacles or running through gates, you’ll be making a conga line of popsicles trays, then filling them with juice, and finally freezing them. From there, you can also cover them in chocolate or get sprinkles added on.

As you add to your popsicle parade throughout a level, they become a little more unruly to control and, in turn, more challenging to make. The end of every level has a little bonus slide where you can multiply your points depending on how many popsicles you successfully made. These points can then be used to cosmetically alter your popsicles. It’s not groundbreaking, but it is good, mindless fun.

4 High Heels!

Elusive and fun

High Heels!/ Pocket-lint 

High Heels!

Developer

Rollic Games

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

Yes

Finding all of these games, for the most part, just required searching for the general gist of the game as seen on TikTok and seeing what came up. High Heels! was, by far, the most difficult of these games to track down. The premise is simple, it’s a runner-type game where you’re stacking yourself up on an ever-growing tower of high heels.

But, when searching for high heels games on the App Store, you’ll find dozens of options. The problem is, most of them suck. Some of them really just feel like an app made to make you fail the same level over and over as to make you watch an ad, over and over. High Heels! does not feel that way. It may still have a ton of ads, but it is actually a game that you can progress in.

5 Spiral Roll

Wood, or rolled ice cream?

Spiral Roll/ Pocket-lint

Spiral Roll

Developer

Voodoo

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

Yes

When seeing this game on TikTok, you might think it looks like rolled ice cream. If you search for a rolled ice cream game, you’ll only find games about making desserts for increasingly angry customers. If you thought this game looked like shaving off spirals of wood, then you are correct…sort of. Spiral Roll is a simple game where you hold down on the screen to create large spiral rolls to crash through obstacles.

It’s also extremely simple and plainly not fun due to its extreme simplicity.

6 Color Pencil Run

Scribble and stack

Color Pencil Run/ Pocket-lint

Color Pencil Run

Developer

OSA Studio

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

No

The idea of a runner where you control a pencil slowly getting whittled down as it drags across a canvas is novel. Whereas most different runners just throw you into the shoes of a slightly reskinned guy, an inanimate object that lends itself to an interesting gimmick is actually fun. Combine that with having to keep up with changing colors, and you’ve actually got a pretty interesting little game.

Color Pencil Run is by no means the greatest mobile game you’ll ever play, but it is at least inspired. There’s a fun idea at the bottom of it, which is a lot more than you can say about some mobile games. It isn’t the best runner-type game out there, but its gameplay is unique enough and genuinely quite fun.

7 Weapon Master

Gates, with guns.

Weapon Master

Developer

Homa Games

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

Yes

Weapon Master is very similar to Count Master. It’s a game where the player runs through gates in order to upgrade enough to pass through obstacles. However, rather than growing a mob, Weapon Master sees you upgrading a gun to shoot through metal targets and enemy blobs.

There are lots of games that look like this one in ads, but nine times out of ten, they’re fake. You can download the games from these ads, but they’re usually just some kind of Clash of Clans clone that has the mini-game from the ad locked behind literal days worth of progress. If you’ve ever wanted a small taste of one of those games, Weapon Master is a great way to get one.

8 Subway Surfers

The original, the best

Subway Surfers/ Pocket-lint

Subway Surfers

Developer

Sybo Games

Ads

Yes

In-app purchases?

Yes

The king, the original, the runner to end all runners. Subway Surfers was one of the original games that started popping up alongside TikTok videos as a kind of attention grabber. And there’s a reason it was the original, and that it still crops up on some TikToks to this day: Subway Surfers is a lot of fun.

Subway Surfers is the most basic of infinite runners, where you simply swipe from side-to-side as well as up-and-down to avoid various obstacles. It’s easy to get into, and is very easy to get pretty good at. Subway Surfers is the runner that ran so that others could incessantly feed you ads. Many of these games are fun, and might serve as great attention-getters, but they’ll never beat Subway Surfers.