Arcade games

Arcade games take their shape from the old coin-operated cabinets: rules you grasp at a glance, a score that tells you exactly how you did, and a challenge that climbs the longer you last. Some 560 games sit on this shelf. Most carry the general arcade tag, and the rest fall into smaller groups: around 40 retro titles, many of them drawn in pixel art, 25 .io games set in crowded arenas where you grow or fight against a field of rivals, and about 20 snake games, most built on a line that grows with every pickup.

Vegan Quest is score-chasing at its plainest: catch the vegan food, dodge everything else, and each mistake costs a life. Evo Pit puts a crowd of fighters in one closed pit and has you evolve through a chain of forms before the bell. Car Crash Test swaps the high score for wreckage, paying out coins for every car you smash with its 3D physics.

To choose, think about who you want to beat. If it is your own record, the single-player score games are the natural place to begin. If you would rather share the screen with a crowd of rivals, try one of the .io arenas. Almost everything here plays with the arrow keys, a mouse or one thumb, and all of it is free to play without installing anything.