None of these are ours. They are four free-to-play browser games built by other studios, and three of the four are about putting something together: a city dragged through history, a forest city that is really a puzzle, a vehicle welded out of scrap, and a Greek archipelago at war.
Every one of them opens in the tab you are reading this in. No installer, no launcher, nothing to patch. Each entry gives the same four facts - what the game is, what it does well, how long a sitting runs and what it really costs.
Most pages like this one list forty games and leave you knowing nothing about any of them. Four is few enough that someone sat down with each. The bar was:
A single city dragged from the stone age into the future, era by era, with the map getting tighter every time and a guild that notices if you vanish.
A forest city for elves or humans, where the hard part is not the fighting but deciding what gets the last free square. Half city builder, half jigsaw.
Scrap goes in, a vehicle comes out, and the arena tells you what you got wrong. Half the appeal is the garage, the other half is watching your creation lose a wheel at speed.
Classical Greece as a shared archipelago: cities on islands, gods you can call on, and sea distances that make an alliance a necessity rather than a nicety.
Read the session column first. What separates these is far less the subject than how much of your week they expect to take.
| Game | Genre | A typical sitting | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forge of Empires | City Through the Ages | 15 to 30 minutes | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
| Elvenar | Fantasy City-Builder | 15 to 25 minutes | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
| Crossout | Vehicle Combat | 15 to 30 minutes a match | Desktop and laptop. |
| Grepolis | Ancient Greece Strategy | Short daily check-ins | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
All four are free to open and free to carry on with. All four also sell something: a premium account, a faster timer, a currency, a part. That is how the servers are paid for, and stopping at the word "free" would leave out the half you need.
What matters is whether somebody who never spends is still playing the same game, and here they are, four times over. Money buys speed and convenience far more often than it buys an advantage. If you do decide to spend, pick the figure before the shop is open in front of you.
A browser game is the only kind you can begin on a work laptop at lunch and carry on with at home without moving a single file. The convenience is paid for in a few places:
Elvenar, if you like the kind of problem where everything nearly fits. It is the gentlest of the four and the city is worth looking at within the hour. If you want something louder, Crossout has you in an arena in minutes.
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.
Not in order to play. Each one sells optional extras, which is what funds it, and none of them hides the good part behind the shop.
Only that we play them. They are other studios' work, listed here on their merits and nothing else.
Four free browser games the people behind this site actually play. Not one of them is ours.