Browser games are almost as old as the web itself, and believe you me it saved many a boring computer class in high-school, or eternal Friday afternoon at work.
Today browser games can be just as sophisticated and impressive as games that run outside of a browser, but over the course of the web’s history there have been a few standout titles that aren’t just good for browser games. They’re just good games period.
10
Runescape
Runescape is one of the earliest MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) and it started off in 2001 as a browser-based title. It would later become a standalone program in 2016, but for most of it’s existence you could load it up in a browser and play.
The screenshot above is from Old School Runescape, which is the best way to play the original game online today. It’s available on just about every platform, including mobile devices. The most current version of the game is called Runescape 3.
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The game is set in a medieval fantasy world called Gielinor, divided up into numerous regions. Keep in mind that this is a few years before World of Warcraft took the world by storm, so Runescape was pretty ahead of its time. Unlike those later MMORPGs, the game doesn’t have a set linear story. Players decide how they want to spend their time in the world and what they’ll do while there.
I’m not really an MMORPG guy myself, but I’ve dabbled a little in Old School Runescape recently and I can see why people fell in love with it. There’s a huge community and active player base. So even though you can’t sneak some play in your browser, you can just load the game on your phone and do a little questing while your boss isn’t looking.
9
Neopets
Remember the Tamagotchi craze? When people would walk around with little digital keychains that beeped when the little on-screen character needed food, or some other form of care. It was a great way to teach kids responsibility, and to teach parents patience as the little guy beeped incessantly at the least convenient times. Not that I would know, my parents never bought me one.
Anyway, Neopets is like that, but it also combines some elements of what people would call the metaverse today, and lots of the mechanics and elements that people now loathe because of the monetization aspect. 1999 was a more innocent time though, and kids probably loved earning Neopoints so they could buy accessories for their pets.
The game is still going, all you have to do is head over to the website and click the “play now” button.
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8
QWOP
You don’t think about it when you walk in real life, it just sort of happens, right? Likewise, in most video games, the character handles the details of walking, but in QWOP you have to manually control the movement of the thighs and calves of a runner. This game is so frustrating that people should really be saying Dark Souls is the QWOP of RPGs, rather than comparing every hard game to FROMSOFT’s popular masochism simulator.
Despite this, the game was a phenomenon, rewarding skill and being engrossing at the same time. Failure wasn’t a bad thing, as long as you managed to get a few more meters ahead. Some of the best methods are hard to recognize as “walking” but hey, it’s not how you get there that matters, as long as you make it to the finish line.
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7
The Kingdom of Loathing
Before games like South Park: The Stick of Truth there was 2003’s The Kingdom of Loathing. If Douglas Adams made a Dungeons & Dragons game in MS Paint, you’d get—this.
With its stick-figure art, sarcastic writing, and satirical tone, this turn-based RPG spoofs every fantasy trope under the sun. There are Disco Bandits, Pastamancers, and enemies like the “Sabre-Toothed Lime.” It was weird in all the right ways—and it’s still going. So go play it now, because there’s no way I can explain what the heck this game is really about.
6
Cookie Clicker
Cookie Clicker distilled gaming to its most primal loop: click thing, get reward. This was the game that practically invented the idle game genre, where you basically play by not actually playing.
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You’d start by manually clicking for cookies, and soon you’re managing an entire economy of grandmas, time machines, and sentient cookie-producing planets. It’s a satire, a compulsion loop, and a surprisingly complex incremental game all rolled into one. I also spent like five minutes playing it right now instead of writing this, so you have been warned.
5
A Dark Room
A Dark Room begins as a mysterious text-based game where you stoke a fire. Then it slowly evolves into something much deeper—and, well, darker. It’s a masterclass in slow-burn narrative, revealing a post-apocalyptic story through gameplay alone. No graphics. No tutorial. Just the slow creep of dread and curiosity pulling you forward.
I actually quite like it, and if you grew up playing games like Zork, like me, then this will bring back those same creepy vibes.
4
AdventureQuest
2002’s AdventureQuest was the RPG you could load at school that felt almost like playing Final Fantasy—if Final Fantasy had corny jokes and one-frame animations. You created a character, battled monsters, and progressed through campy quests, all in gloriously janky Flash. It helped pave the way for browser-based RPGs and even MMOs.
You can still play the game today, but clicking on the Flash version will, of course, just show you that Flash is no longer supported. So you’ll have to download a game client, because playing in your browser is no longer possible.
3
Google Dino Game
This is, of course, a “hidden” game in the Google Chrome browser that everyone knows about. When the internet goes out, you’ll see the iconic dino. If you click on the playfield or press the spacebar, the dino will start to run, and you’ll realize that it’s actually an endless runner game.
It’s also incredibly fun, and there’s actually nothing worse than running up a really high score, only for the internet to come back on!
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2
Desktop Tower Defense
2007’s Desktop Tower Defense nailed the perfect mix of strategy and accessibility. It ran well in a browser, was easy to pick up, and offered just enough depth to make you feel clever when your maze finally worked. It was a massive hit during the Flash game boom, and it helped define a genre that still thrives on mobile today. For better or for worse!
You can still play a version of it, but of course Flash itself doesn’t work anymore. So the experience might not be exactly the same.
1
OpenArena Live
Before cloud gaming was trendy, OpenArena Live proved you could frag your friends in a full 3D FPS right inside your browser. Based on the open-source OpenArena (itself a GPL fork of Quake III Arena), this version used early WebGL and plugin tech to recreate the twitchy, circle-strafing deathmatches of old-school LAN parties.
Of course, if you want the real-deal Quake 3 experience, you can play Quake Live, but that’s no longer a browser game, and you’ll need the Steam client to play. So if you want to frag someone at any time just using your browser, OpenArena Live is the only game left in town.
Browsers really are the most versatile applications we have today, and we even have computers like Chromebooks that basically use a browser as the operating system. So it should be no surprise that a few clever game developers wasted no time in helping us waste ours.
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