Key Takeaways
- Flash may be gone, but browser games are still alive and well for sneaky entertainment.
- Explore dungeon crawl adventures or indulge in creepy idle games like A Dark Room.
- Test your sense of direction with openGuessr or teach AI by drawing in Quick, Draw!
In the heyday of Flash, browser games were everywhere. Entire sites were dedicated to hosting the hundreds of new games people were creating that you could play right in your browser. With no need to download anything or have a fancy graphics card, they were perfect for sneaking in some gaming time when you probably shouldn’t be.
Sadly, Flash has gone the way of the Dodo, but browser games haven’t gone away
Sadly, Flash has gone the way of the Dodo, but browser games haven’t gone away. There are still plenty of creators putting out new and creative little games you can play in Chrome , Firefox, or even Edge if you’re feeling crazy. If it’s been a while since you dove into the world of browser games, I’m here to help you find a few new titles you can keep open in a tab while you’re at work to keep you entertained. Just don’t let your boss find out!
1 Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
Roguelike adventure
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
Whether or not you recognize the Dungeon Crawl name, this community-driven sequel is a pure roguelike in a way most modern games using that tag aren’t. You will pick your species from nearly 30 options, including Gargoyle, Tengu, Demigo, Vampire, and more which each have their own unique stats, as well as your background that acts as your class. From there, you’re thrust into a fully randomized dungeon to explore, right monsters, collect loot, and level up. This game has a steep learning curve, but because it is completely turn-based you can take it at your own pace.
2 A Dark Room
Creepy idle game
A Dark Room
Idle games are some of the best to have running in the background while you’re working since you will always make progress even if you aren’t actively playing them. A Dark Room is my personal favorite take on the genre because it actually has a bit of a narrative to give the entire experience an eerie and somewhat unsettling vibe. You begin, as the name suggests, in a dark room with the only option being to start a fire. From there, you open up more options of things to do outside the room, resources to gather, and things to invest in to slowly automate more processes. It is strangely addicting, but all done through text so even if you get caught, it won’t immediately look like you’re playing a game.
3 OpenGuessr
Test your sense of direction
OpenGuessr
Do you consider yourself a person with a good sense of direction? Do you enjoy pretending to explore areas using Google Maps? If you said yes to both of these, give OpenGuessr a go. This is the exact same game as GeoGuessr, except you don’t have to pay a subscription to play. You will be placed in a random location on Earth with the goal of trying to put a pin on the map as close to where you are as possible based on what you see around you. The closer you get, the more points you earn.
4 Quick, Draw!
Teach AI by drawing
Quick, Draw!
I have many qualms about how AI is being used, but this isn’t one of them. Quick, Draw! is a game where you attempt to draw a normal object as best you can to see if you can get the AI to guess it correctly. It’s just like Pictionary, only you’re always the one doing the drawing. You are given a short time limit for each drawing so rounds never take more than a couple seconds, and it’s great fun to see how well your drawing skills translate to a mouse. Or, in my case, it’s amazing to see how smart this AI is to be able to decode by mess of lines correctly so fast.
5 Slither.io
Snake with friends
Slither.io
We all know and love Snake, but what if it was a competitive multiplayer game? Slither.io is one of the most popular Itch.io games for its simplicity and “one more run” feeling. Like Snake, your goal is to eat as many dots as possible to grow longer, but it isn’t just your own tail you need to worry about but other players’ too. You guide your snake by moving your cursor and aren’t locked to turning in cardinal directions like in the old days. The map is massive so you will always be on edge of running into another player who is 10 times larger than you. You can try and stay away from others and grow on your own, or play aggressively and try and force other players to run into your tail to eliminate them.
