Best online game services
Here’s our favorite online game service:
Lichess, a free open-source chess server. There are no ads, no surveillance, and no subscription fees, as everything is funded by user donations (just like Good Reports!). See also Why Lichess will always be free (April 22, 2021).
Other good games
- Wordle, a free daily word game built by a single developer (see this NYT story from Jan 3, 2022). However, after the NYT bought the game, it installed surveillance trackers on the game, some of which lead to Google (source: Shoshana Wodinksy). See also Semantle, guessing the word based on semantic proximity; Worldle, a guess-the-country geography game; Heardle, an audio name-that-tune game; Absurdle, a Wordle-type game that changes its secret word to evade your guesses; Countle, Nerdle, Math Game, all Wordle-style games with arithmetic; Three Magic Words, a timed word-scramble game; Twenty Letters, a kind of Boggle clone with a Wordle interface; Quordle, a four-way word puzzle; Reversle, an inversion of Wordle where you guess the guesses; a Lord of the Rings-themed clone called Lordle; and for New Yorkers, a subway-themed game called Subwaydle.
- Words Against Strangers is a clever Boggle-like game in which you compete against the recorded play of a daily opponent.
- Idle Breakout is a “clicker game” based on the classic Breakout videogame. Free browser game. See also, from the same designer, Religious Idle – a clicker game where you start a new religion.
- Sand Spiel and Orb Farm, while not exactly games, are fun sandbox toys. Add various ingredients (sand, water, algae) and watch the results.
- Board Game Arena: "a community-based website" offering a huge library of online board games, both turn-based and real-time.
- Nethack: a free one-player adventure game, a classic "roguelike" - originally launched in the 1980s and updated by a volunteer dev team for over two decades. Requires some technical skill to set up. Or you can play Nethack online at alt.org.
- Zork and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, classic text adventures from Infocom, playable for free in the browser window at textadventures.co.uk. Many other text adventures there, too.
- Sokyokuban, a version of Sokoban (itself the subject of one level in Nethack, listed above) - the Japanese puzzle game of pushing tiles. This one uses a non-Euclidean hyperbolic plane.
- Type Racer, in which you race other players to see who can type a snippet of text the fastest. (A fun one-player typing game is ZType.)
- Dark Pattern Games “helps you find healthy mobile games” by pointing out the addictive hooks that many games use. Scroll down to see a list of “Healthy Games,” which don’t rely on those patterns, next to a list of “Dark Games” to avoid.
