Most games on this list have some kind of natural boundary — a match ends, a level completes, an episode finishes. Subway Surfers doesn't have one. It's an endless runner: the track keeps generating itself for as long as you keep dodging obstacles, and the only way a run ends is that you eventually make a mistake. There's no "you win" screen waiting for you, ever, which removes the one thing every other game on this list at least occasionally offers as a reason to stop.
What actually makes Subway Surfers hard to close
The lack of an ending is the entire mechanic: a run continues exactly as long as your reflexes hold up, so "how far can I get this time" is a moving target with no ceiling, and a personal best is always technically beatable on the very next attempt. One-thumb, low-effort controls make starting a new run essentially frictionless the moment the last one ends — there's no loading screen, no menu to navigate, just an immediate retry, which removes almost every natural pause point a more complex game would have. Daily challenges and missions reset on a schedule the game controls, adding a check-in habit similar to a timer-based game's, on top of the moment-to-moment pull of chasing a better run.
The built-in iPhone route, and where it gives way
An iOS Screen Time App Limit on Subway Surfers behaves like it does on any app: a warning, a lock screen, one "Ignore Limit for Today" button that clears it in a tap, needing only a Screen Time passcode you set and know yourself. Because a run only ever ends by crashing, a limit landing mid-run just gets absorbed into the next immediate restart — there's no natural pause to land on, so the override happens as a matter of course rather than a deliberate choice.
The built-in Android route, and where it gives way
Digital Wellbeing's App Timer greys out Subway Surfers's icon at your limit and offers more time the instant you tap it, adjustable or removable from Settings whenever you like. Same problem as iPhone: an endless runner has no stopping point the timer can align with, so the override tends to happen automatically, as part of the same reflexive retry that follows every crash.
What changes when the toll is three questions
Mr. Grummel's toll sits in front of opening the app, which is the one moment an endless runner can't design its way around — there's no run in progress yet, no personal best to chase, nothing to interrupt except the decision to start. The three questions cost a few minutes of genuine thought, and because Subway Surfers never offers a natural stopping point of its own, that decision to open the app is effectively the only real decision point the whole session is ever going to have.
A realistic day
Right now: "one quick run" turns into twenty, each crash immediately followed by another attempt with no pause long enough to reconsider. With the toll in place: opening the app runs into three questions first. A session you've genuinely got a few minutes for still happens. What's interrupted is the automatic reopen after the session ends, which now has to survive its own few minutes of thinking, since the game itself was never going to provide that pause on its own.