Browser games with nothing to install
A browser game is the last genuinely frictionless kind of game: no launcher, no account, no eight-gigabyte download, no patch on the day you finally want to play. You open a tab and you are in.
The catch is that most lists of them are stale, because browser games live on borrowed infrastructure — unofficial mirrors on free hosting that vanish without notice. Everything below was loaded and played in a real browser before publication.
- 1
Infinite Craftinfinite-craft.org
Combine two things, get a third. Genuinely novel, and the sort of thing that eats an evening without ever feeling like a game.
Open it here → - 2
Cookie Clickercookieclicker.com
The original idle game, still on its own domain, still the benchmark for the entire genre.
Open it here → - 3
Slopepapasgamesfree.io
A ball, a slope, and increasing speed. Simple enough to learn in a second and hard enough to keep you.
Open it here → - 4
2048ams.cdn.arkadiumhosted.com
The tile puzzle that took over 2014. Still the cleanest possible demonstration of one good rule.
Open it here → - 5
Wordle Unlimitedwordleunlimited.org
Wordle without the once-a-day limit, which is either an improvement or the whole point removed, depending on your view.
Open it here → - 6
- 7
Doodle Champion Island Games Googlegameblabla.github.io
Google’s own Olympics doodle game, which is far more substantial than a doodle has any right to be.
Open it here → - 8
Quakeemupedia.net
Quake. Actual Quake, compiled to run in a browser tab, which remains slightly hard to believe.
Open it here →
The Games filter on the button draws only from this part of the catalogue — 145 of them, none of which is a dead mirror, because dead mirrors are removed as soon as a sweep catches them.
Questions
What are the best browser games?
For sheer novelty, Infinite Craft. For staying power, Cookie Clicker and Slope. For a proper game with no compromise, the browser build of Quake, which runs a full 1996 shooter in a tab.
Do browser games need to be downloaded?
No. Everything here runs in the browser as it loads — no installer, no plugin, no account. That was not true a decade ago, when most of them needed Flash, which is exactly why so few games from that era still work.
Every site above was loaded in a real browser and verified working before this was published. See the full catalogue.