The most important thing about this festive season is to get some downtime. These free web games will give you just that. You won’t need a gaming console for these, but we suggest you use a good browser, like Chrome.
Our best free browser games picks
1. The Descent of the Serpent
A wicked thieving type has stolen jewels from ancient Mesoamerica – and then abandoned them at various spots. You’ll need to collect and return everything to Chichen Itza before the solar equinox. If you don’t, the world floods. No pressure.
This is a family-friendly arcade game and you’ll get some education as you play. At various points, you’ll get useful info about the stuff you’ve picked up. In the end, once you do hand the objects over, you’ll have a quiz, so make sure you pay attention along the way.
Play The Descent of the Serpent
2. A Dark Room
A Dark Room has a ‘thrive ‘n’ survive’ challenge. It’s a text- and menu-driven adventure and you’ll need to build up and maintain a community in the wild. To survive, you’ll need logistics and supply management skills to make it past animal attacks. It’s an adventure waiting to happen. If you need to take a break, you’ll also be able to save your progress in your browser and continue when you can.
3. Almost Pong
Imagine Pong. Two bats and One ball. Well, this game is, as the name suggests, ‘almost’ Pong. Instead of two players, there’s you alone. And rather than controlling the bat, you control the ball.
Space (or tap) makes the minimalist protagonist jump a bit. Over time, the bats shrink and the game speeds up. Enjoy.
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4. Alter Ego
Alter Ego will remind you of older computer games. It’s a remake of an ancient PC game and it deals with progress through everyday life. No, it’s not The Sims. You won’t see cute little idiots blundering about. Instead, you’ll find stark icons and multiple-choice text.
However, it has depth and a script written by a psychologist, which offers branching progress that could lead you to a happy old age or abruptly dying as a toddler, having necked some bleach you found under the sink.
5. Boulder Dash
Boulder Dash is the official online remake of a 1980s 8-bit classic that finds Rockford digging through dirt, grabbing diamonds, and trying to avoid getting crushed by the titular boulders or blown up by explosive underground wildlife.
It looks crude, but the mix of puzzling and arcade action remains highly compelling. It’s not quite a one-to-one conversion – some cave speeds are off, for example, but it scratches a particular retro itch when you’ve got a few minutes to spare, and are many miles away from a Commodore 64.
6. Candy Box 2
If you’re looking for minimalistic, Candy Box 2 is as minimal as can be. A candy counter ticks upwards, and you can eat all your candies, or get some to the ground. You’ll wish you had the actual sugary treats in real life this festive season.
It starts off by resembling a pointless clicker and then transforms into an oddball RPG. You’ll need to ‘buy’ a status bar, and then some weapons, before scouring a village and beyond, embarking on epic quests where you get all stabby with an ASCII sword. It’s a glorious game.
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7. Car Boot Carnage
Imagine cramming things into the back of your car before heading off on holiday this festive season. Now imagine Tetris, albeit with a wider variety of pieces that need to be packed. That’s Car Boot Carnage. Some pieces are so important that you can’t leave them out before closing the boot.
It starts off easy enough with you having to deal with small items. Then you’ll be squeezing in tents and more. It’s just like going on holiday, but without the family arguments. We hope.
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8. Cardhoard+
This game depicts a worker’s plight in a gigantic warehouse. Cardhoard+ finds a summer jobber leaping about, applying packaging tape to gigantic cardboard boxes. Once taped, boxes can be stomped on, which explains the state they’re in when they show up at your door.
You’ll need to keep the worker motivated. Boxes are occasionally replaced by cubes that emit deadly laser beams. Should a stack of boxes reach a line of doom, they disintegrate and are replaced by an indestructible penalty cube.
This game is fast, furious, satirical, and fun. It may bring on PTSD if you work for Amazon, however.
9. Combo Pool
Sort of what might happen if you knocked Threes! into a game of pool, Combo Pool finds you firing coloured balls into a tiny arena. If two match, they merge and upgrade to the next colour, until you eventually knock together a pair of explosive pink balls.
It has a twist. You’ll need to keep smashing balls into the arena without combining them as your life quickly runs dry.
10. Cookie Clicker
What shall we make of Cookie Clicker? On one hand, it’s a Skinner box. You’ll do a lot of clicking and you’ll be rewarded for it. It’s also an amusing satire on the state of modern ‘idle’ gaming.
You’ll start off by clicking and you’ll get a cookie for it. The more cookies you have, the more power-ups you can afford, including cursors that click on your behalf. Eventually, you’re using time machines to bring cookies from the past, “before they were even eaten”, and converting raw light into cookies with giant prisms, to bring in millions of cookies per second. We’re not sure what the end game is, but we’re clicking and we’re enjoying it. If only these cookies were real.