None of these are ours. Three are free-to-play browser strategy games from other studios - one village among thousands, the Great War fought by thirty people at once, and a castle with impatient neighbours - and the fourth is a doorway to several dozen other free games for the nights when none of the three appeals.
Every one of them opens in the tab you are reading this in. No installer, no launcher, nothing to patch on a Tuesday. Each entry below gives you the same four facts: what the game is, what it does well, how long a sitting lasts and what it actually costs.
The usual list of this kind runs to forty entries and leaves you none the wiser about any of them. Four is few enough that each one was opened and played before being written about. Four things had to be true:
A collection rather than a game: a few dozen free titles sorted by genre, all of them opening in the tab you are in. Useful on an evening when you cannot face another war map.
A village, a map full of other villages, and troops that take real hours to arrive. Almost twenty years old and still the cleanest expression of the idea.
The Great War handed to thirty players on one map of Europe, running in real days. Slow, political, and ruinous when an ally changes their mind.
A castle to fortify, neighbours to raid and an alliance that will notice if you go quiet. The friendliest way into this kind of game, and deeper than it first looks.
The session column is the one to read first. What separates these is not the subject matter but how much of your week each of them expects to take.
| Game | Genre | A typical sitting | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Esprit Games | Browser Games Portal | As long or short as you like | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
| Tribal Wars | Tribal Strategy | Short visits, several a day | Desktop and laptop. |
| Supremacy 1914 | WW1 Grand Strategy | Two or three checks a day | Desktop and laptop. |
| Goodgame Empire | Castle Strategy | 15 to 25 minutes | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
All four are free to open and free to carry on with, and each of them sells something: a premium account, a currency, a faster timer. That is how they are funded, and describing them as simply free would leave out the part you actually need to know.
What matters is whether somebody who never spends is still playing a proper game, and in all four cases they are. Money here mostly buys back waiting. If you are going to spend, settle on the figure before the shop is open in front of you.
A browser game is the only sort you can start on a work laptop at lunch and continue at home without carrying anything between the two. The convenience is paid for somewhere:
Goodgame Empire. It is the gentlest introduction of the four, it always has a next thing for you to do, and it gets considerably deeper once an alliance takes an interest in you. If you would rather read a map than build on one, Supremacy 1914 is the better evening.
No. All four are browser games. One or two have an optional standalone client; it is never needed.
They will open on a phone, but they are mouse-first games. A tablet manages; a laptop is better.
Usually, because your world has to be stored between visits. The account is on their own site, unrelated to this one.
None of them to play. Each sells optional extras, which is how the servers are paid for, and none of them puts the interesting part behind a purchase.
Because the people who run this site play them. All four belong to other studios and there is no arrangement behind their appearing on this page.
A short list of free-to-play browser games kept by the people who run this site. None of these four games are ours.