None of these are ours. They are four free-to-play browser games from other studios, chosen because no two want the same thing from you: a city raised slowly along a river, a ship with other crews after it, a railway timetable, and a dogfight over in minutes.
All four open in the tab you are reading this in. Nothing to install, nothing to keep patched. Each entry says what the game is, how long a normal sitting runs and what it really costs, so you can ignore three of them and open the fourth.
Lists like this usually run to fifty entries and leave you knowing nothing about any of them. Four is short enough that somebody actually played each one. The conditions were:
Ancient Egypt raised one building at a time, with a quest line that always has a next thing for you and never nags about it. The gentlest way into this kind of game.
Open water, a ship you keep bolting plating onto, and other crews who want what is in your hold. Scrappier and far more immediate than the builders.
A railway empire built through six historical eras, where the real game is routing and timetables rather than combat. Quietly one of the most absorbing things in a browser.
Capital ships and asteroid fields, with a hangar you fill slowly as you work out which hull suits you. A fight starts and finishes while the kettle boils.
Read the session column before anything else. The difference between these four is mostly a difference in how much of your week they expect.
| Game | Genre | A typical sitting | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anocris | Ancient Strategy | 20 to 30 minutes | Desktop and laptop. |
| Seafight | Pirate MMO | 20 to 40 minutes | Desktop and laptop. |
| Rail Nation | Railway Tycoon | 15 to 25 minutes | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
| Star Conflict | Space Shooter | 15 to 30 minutes a match | Desktop and laptop. |
Every one of the four is free to open and free to carry on with, and every one sells something: a premium account, a faster timer, a currency, a hull. That is how they keep the lights on, and leaving it at the word "free" would be hiding the useful half.
The thing worth knowing is whether the game still works if you never spend, and in all four it does. What money buys here is almost always time you would otherwise have waited. If you decide to spend, pick the number before you open the shop rather than while you are inside it.
A browser game is the only sort you can start on a laptop at lunch and continue at home without carrying anything with you. That convenience is paid for somewhere:
Anocris, if you want to end the evening with something built. It explains itself without nagging and an hour in you have a city worth looking at. If you would rather have a result inside twenty minutes, take Star Conflict instead and fly badly for a while.
No. Each of the four plays in the browser. A couple have an optional client for people who want one.
They will load, but every one of them assumes a mouse and some screen. Phones are for checking in; a laptop is for playing.
For most of them, yes, because your progress has to be stored somewhere. The account belongs to that studio and has nothing to do with this site.
Free to start and free to keep going. Each one sells optional extras, which is how it funds itself, and none of them puts the interesting part behind a purchase.
Nothing except the people who wrote the page. The four games are other studios' work and they are here because they are worth an evening.
A short, honest list of free-to-play browser games kept by the people who run this site. None of these four games are ours.