None of these are ours. Three are free-to-play browser games from other studios - deep space mining, a medieval war with a real battle layer, a football club you manage ten minutes at a time - and the fourth is a portal to several dozen more, for the evenings when none of the three appeals.
Everything here runs in the tab you are in. No download, no launcher, no client to maintain. Each entry says what the game is, what it is good at, how long a sitting takes and what it actually costs.
A list of fifty browser games tells you nothing about any of them. This one is four long so that each entry could be written by somebody who had played the thing. The bar was:
Deep space, three companies and a lot of ore. You fly out, fill the hold, upgrade the ship, and find out who else wanted that sector. It has been running for years and it shows in the best way.
A medieval map with a tactical battle layer bolted on: the empire-building is familiar, the fights themselves are the part you actually think about.
A football club at the bottom of the table and a fixture list that arrives whether you are ready or not. Training, transfers, tactics, ten minutes a day.
Not a game but a door into a few dozen, sorted by genre and all playable in the tab you are in. Handy when none of the three above is what you wanted tonight.
Start with the session column. What separates these four is less what they are about and more how much of your week they intend to occupy.
| Game | Genre | A typical sitting | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| DarkOrbit | Space MMO | 20 to 40 minutes | Desktop and laptop. |
| Total Battle | Tactical Empire | 15 to 25 minutes | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
| GoalUnited | Football Manager | About ten minutes a day | Desktop and laptop. |
| Esprit Games | Browser Games Portal | As long as you like | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
All of them are free to open and free to stay with. All of them sell something too: a premium account, a currency, a faster timer, a better ship. That is the funding model, and calling them free full stop would be leaving out the useful part.
What we checked is whether a non-paying player still has a game, and in each case they do. Money here buys speed and convenience far more than it buys power. If you do spend, set the amount before you open the shop, because the shop will not set it for you.
A browser game is the only kind you can begin on a work machine at lunch and continue at home without moving anything across. That convenience has a cost attached:
GoalUnited, if ten minutes a day is honestly all you have - the season runs whether you show up or not, which is the whole appeal. If you want an evening rather than a habit, DarkOrbit will swallow one whole.
No. Every game here is played in the browser. One or two offer a client as an extra, never as a requirement.
They open, but none of them was built for a thumb. A laptop or a tablet makes the difference between looking and playing.
Usually, so your world exists the next time you visit. It is a free account with that developer and entirely separate from this site.
Not to play. Every title sells optional extras, which is how it pays for itself, and none of them keeps the good part behind the till.
They are not, beyond the fact that we play them. All four belong to other studios and are listed on their merits.
A short list of free-to-play browser games kept by the people behind this site. None of these games are ours.