Free browser games

Play in the browser, with nothing in the way

Every game here opens and plays in the browser tab you already have open. There is no app to install, no account to create, and no email address to hand over before you get to the first move. Click a game and it starts.

That is a deliberate constraint rather than a missing feature. A puzzle should be something you can pick up in the two minutes you actually have — waiting for a build, standing in a queue, sitting on a train — and a sign-up wall is fatal to that. It also keeps the pages small and quick, which matters as much on a five-year-old phone over patchy mobile data as it does on a desktop.

What's in the catalog

Sudoku gives you a fresh grid with a guaranteed unique solution, five difficulty levels, pencil marks for candidates, and optional highlighting that shows the row, column, and box you're working in. Turn the assists off and it's a plain grid and a pencil.

Inkling is a five-letter word game: six guesses to find the hidden word, with each guess telling you which letters are correct and which are merely present. There's a new word every day, and an unlimited practice mode for when one puzzle a day isn't enough.

Checkers plays two different sets of rules — American checkers on an eight-by-eight board, and International draughts on a ten-by-ten with flying kings and compulsory maximum capture. Take on the computer at one of three strengths, or pass a device back and forth with someone else.

Tic-Tac-Toe is the three-by-three classic, solved perfectly by the hardest computer setting — the most it will ever allow is a draw. A quick game against a friend or a computer that never blunders.

Gomoku is five-in-a-row on a much bigger fifteen-by-fifteen board, freestyle rules. The computer opponent reads the board for open lines rather than searching every move, since the board is far too large to search completely.

Four in a Row drops discs into a seven-wide grid instead of placing them freely — a disc always falls to the lowest open space in its column, which is most of what makes the game's tactics different from Tic-Tac-Toe or Gomoku's freeform placement.

Reversi (also known as Othello) is a flipping game rather than a placing one — every disc you set down traps and turns over any of your opponent's discs caught in a line behind it, so control of the board can swing hard in a single move.

Mancala sows seeds around the board rather than placing single pieces — land your last seed in your own store for an extra turn, or in one of your own empty pits to capture whatever sits opposite it.

2048 is the odd one out in the catalog — no opponent, just you against the grid. Slide every tile as far as it goes and matching numbers merge, with a new tile appearing after every move.

Memory Match is the simplest rule set in the catalog — flip two cards, keep them if they match — and three board sizes to make it as quick or as testing as you want.

Minesweeper is pure deduction — every revealed number tells you exactly how many mines are touching it, and your first click is always guaranteed safe.

Word Search hides ten words in a grid of letters, running in any of eight directions. Five themes to pick from, each dealing a fresh grid.

Nonogram (Picross) gives you a run-length clue for every row and column instead of a finished picture to copy — cross-referencing rows against columns is most of how you'll actually solve it.

Kakuro is a cross-sum puzzle: every run of cells carries a target sum instead of a finished picture, and no digit may repeat within a run — the same no-repeats rule Sudoku runs on, applied to sums instead of a fixed 1-9 grid.

Calcudoku layers Sudoku's one-of-each-digit rule for every row and column underneath cages with their own arithmetic clues — add, subtract, multiply, or divide to a target sum.

Mahjong Solitaire clears a stack of 144 tiles by matching pairs — only tiles with a clear top and an open side can be picked up. Every deal is built to be genuinely solvable, not just shuffled and hoped for.

Solitaire is Klondike, the classic — build the tableau down in alternating colors, the foundations up by suit. Unlike everything else in the catalog, a deal here isn't guaranteed winnable, which is true of the real game too.

Crossword is a small, hand-written five-by-five grid — five different puzzles to choose from, each with its own short theme.

Chess plays against Stockfish, one of the strongest engines in the world, running entirely in your browser — nothing about your game leaves your device. Three difficulty levels, or pass the board to a friend instead.

The catalog leans towards classics whose rules are public domain and well understood — games worth playing that don't need explaining.

Your progress stays on your device

Games save as you play, so closing the tab mid-puzzle doesn't cost you the board. That save is written to your browser's local storage and never leaves your device — there's no server holding your half-finished sudoku, which also means clearing your browser data for this site erases it, and a board started on your phone won't appear on your laptop. It's a fair trade for not asking you to register.

Stroboid Games is made by Stroboid, LLC. It's free to play and supported by advertising.