35
votes
Browser game recommendations
I'm traveling for the holidays and only have my laptop, which I don't really have many full fledged games I can run on it (it's a macbook, so a combination of poor macOS support in general + the 32bit cliff means many games just don't run on here). I'm also more interested in casual games while traveling anyways.
Let me know if you have any recommendations for browser-based games, ideally something a little off the beaten path. Multiplayer suggestions welcome too for completeness.
I'll start with some of my favorites:
I love Colonist and enjoy playing the base version of the game with friends, but you're right about how wild the pricing on the memberships is. Almost $200 a year if you want access to the maps and expansions...
Yeah it’s insane. I think I paid them about $25 around the start of the pandemic and now I have most of the expansions and several maps, all included under that one fee. I get that the game requires continuous development but it’s a shame they don’t offer one-time purchases anymore.
I took a peek at their careers page at one point and it seems like they're trying to support a real company off of just colonist.io, so it kinda makes sense to me that the subscriptions would be expensive, even if it is unfortunate. Not too many people are going to subscribe to a game like colonist at all, so I guess they figure they need to get as much as they can per person.
Alright, I've had a tab open with Universal Paperclips since you mentioned it and this week I had it run in the background while I worked. What a journey! Great recommendation, I never would have guessed the trajectory of the game!
Spoliers: I had a question on a forked choice during the game
I chose to reject the offer and dismantle the universe, what happens if you take the offer? Does the game just restart?
Spoilers: answering the question
Yes, you get a universe counter and sim level counter on screen and restart. It's been a while since I made the choice, but I think you get to choose between one of two perks like a boost to your creativity generation.screenshot of what it looks like after making this choice
Kingdom of Loathing is always a good time, but it does take a degree of buy-in.
Paper.io is something that is simple but has taken countless hours of my life. Try out the different game modes. But also be aware that the other players are actually all bots, and the game is deliberately unfair.
Seconding Kingdom of Loathing. It's survived for 20 years; there's an absurd amount of depth.
Third kingdom of loathing.
If it's too much, try the non browser steam West Of Loathing. Same team similiar humour but much smaller world and entirely self contained, no additional reading or planning required
In case you're interested, I'm developing a tiny cozy one where you grow plants and pop bubbles to clean the air 😊 playable on browser on desktop/mobile
Early demo at https://mellowminx.itch.io/air-garden
Or the latest updated playtest build at https://mellowminx.itch.io/test2?secret=pRQesBcZu7L8ytRczaao485UCQQ
(level locks aren't implemented yet but you should play Peaceful Glade first before Lively Meadow)
This kinda counts?
The Flashpoint Archive is a project that preserves old flash games and animations (which often used to be served in browser?).
You can even play it in a browser now! No Flash plugin required. I wrote a MetaFilter post with some best-of's a few months ago if you never experienced (or don't remember!) the hits.
Fallen London is my go-to casual browser game. It's not the most exciting game ever made, but it works on mobile and I enjoy playing some every few hours. The writing is good and the stories are interesting.
Ooh this is a flashback. I'm going to have to pick this back up again and see what's changed
Pico8 games will run in the browser. https://itch.io/games/tag-pico-8
There's also games available on the pico-8 dev forums here.
This is relevant: the best io games you can play right now
I also highly recommend wasting time on neal.fun
https://classic.minecraft.net/ is a version of Minecraft that is entirely web based and you can generate a link to your world that other players can come into.
Completely off, since this is not a browser game, but I recently installed WoW Classic on my macintosh laptop. It was my first time playing WoW, but I enjoyed it, and it runs extremely well on my old computer.
I took it very casually, and it was nice to get through leveling. It was only 5 gigs to run as well!
I wish they lowered the subscription fee for a decade old game at this point. And after they added all the cash shop and token stuff it ruins the whole allure for me personally. Chances for me to return to WoW were already slim but Classic had a nice appeal despite everyone not being completely innocent and having no clue what to do like in 2004.
If the time ever arises I'm hoping for a self-hosted solo experience with maybe some fan-created add-on with AI-integration to make the world a little bit more lively.
There is that AI generated voice lines one. I got a bit tired of the monotony though and disabled it.
I actually felt the sub price fair for SoD. It does take server and GM time to run a game. And there’s quite a bit of new things they added for it.
Agreed for just classic itself though.
Not a browser game recommendation, per se, but you could try looking for ones worth playing by checking out the games.browser tag on Tildes, and maybe sorting by votes + all-time:
https://tildes.net/?order=votes&tag=games.browser&period=all
Dwarf Fortress! Either via the Lazy Noob Pack. Or from Steam.
Love DF but I think the steam and LNP versions are all 64bit. I guess they could try the old legacy 32bit mac version.
64 bit is fine! The 32bit problem is a lot of older games on steam use 32bit binaries internally and macOS stopped supporting running 32bit code entirely a few years ago.
doh! That makes a lot more sense. Though DF is still pretty heavy on CPU/RAM for any medium to large fortress. Rimworld or Factorio may run better.
Factorio might but Rimworld has the same problems as DF does by and large, albeit with different pain points. The main difference is containing less stuff rather than being more efficient, at which point nothing's stopping you from lowering your population caps in DF
It's crazy there's no way to run 32-bit macOS games using some sort of shim. I can play 32-bit Windows games using CrossOver.
I thought this would lead somewhere: https://neugierig.org/software/blog/2023/08/x86-x64-aarch64.html
https://shellshock.io/
Amazing drop in and play fps, browser based on desktop.
Not a direct answer to your question, but you can play Windows games on ARM Macs running Sonoma using Whisky + Game Porting Toolkit (developed by Apple). I've tried it with Cyberpunk on an M1 Pro and it performs surprisingly well.
Prosperous Universe is an always online space economics spread sheets game. I haven't played it in a few years now, but your question brought it back to my mind and now I think I'm gonna boot it up when I get back home...
https://everest-pipkin.com/barnacle-goose/
Idle game/combination game with some fun story mystery stuff
I made a little one called Boxmov
Advance Wars By Web is free and multiplayer. It's asynchronous, which means you can play with friends regardless of everyone's schedule. I find it incredible to stay in touch with friends, I currently have 3 matches ongoing, last one just finished and took a little over a month to complete!
Super Auto Pets - Asynchronous multiplayer auto battler. Also available on mobile and Steam.
Suika Combination - There are many Suika Game clones available but this is my favorite one.
Murdle. Fun daily logic puzzle skinned as a murder mystery. Start on a Monday as they get harder as the week progresses.
PokeClicker. Re live the classic pokemon without anywhere near as much grind.
I've been playing FarmRPG for over six months. Love the game, but for me it's the personality and the community that make it stand out from the others incremental/casual games. The development team is active, and it's totally free if you want it to be. I only spent some money on gold coins as a thank you to the team. (The game got me through the boredom while writing my book, that's no small feat with an ADD brain.)
Enjoy your trip!
A game with premium currency that doesn't sucker my ADHD brain into paying for it and regretting it later? I'm curious and might check this one out. Very rare to see people complement a game's community these days so my interest is piqued.
Haha, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Feel free to add me in-game, I can send you some items to help you get started. Screen name is the same on farmrpg as it is here.
Will probably wait to join until I'm home from Christmas vacay but I'll save your username to friend you once I do!
I'm a fan of Orb of Creation (marple.io). Incremental game that's really fun, not idle.
Super fun strategy game with great depth and community:
https://www.konkr.io/
chiming in to say this one got me! it's like lite civ, it really scratches that itch, i love it.