About Free Games

I am Simon Dong. I built this site on my own, and I still run it on my own. There is no team behind it and no company. I write the games, draw the boards, test them on my own tablet, and read the email myself.

I started it because the games people love are easy to find online and hard to actually play. The print is small. The buttons are smaller. A timer starts before you are ready, something jumps over the board, or you are asked to make an account before you can lay a single card. I wanted the opposite kind of place.

Which games are mine, and which are not

Twenty-five of the games here are my own work, written from nothing for these pages: Sudoku and Daily Sudoku, Cat Sudoku and Daily Cat Sudoku, Klondike, Pyramid, Golf and TriPeaks solitaire, Mahjong Solitaire, the Mini Crossword, Nonogram, Memory Match, Word Search, Word Scramble, Word Groups, the Trivia Quiz, Block Puzzle, Bingo, Dominoes, Cribbage, Gin Rummy, Backgammon, Reversi, Five Dice and the Cryptogram. The rules, the puzzle generators, the scoring, the hints and the artwork in those are mine.

The other twelve are open-source games written by other people: Maze Chase, 2048, Minesweeper, Checkers, Four in a Row, Falling Blocks, Snake, Spider Solitaire, FreeCell, Hearts, Hangman and the Jigsaw Puzzle. I did not write them. I host my own copy of each one on this server, with its licence file kept beside the code exactly as its author published it. I keep them because people ask for them by name, and because a copy hosted here loads quickly and carries none of the advertising you meet elsewhere. They are not built to my rules, though. The Jigsaw, for one, is played by dragging, which is the thing I avoid everywhere in my own games.

What I did differently

• The text starts large. The base size is 22px, where most sites use 16px, and the A+ button takes it to roughly 35px. Nothing here is a fixed picture of a board, so as the text grows the grids, cards and buttons all reflow with it. Bigger print never pushes the game off the side of the screen.
• Nothing is dragged. In my own games you click a card or a tile to pick it up, then click the place it should go. Dragging asks for a steady hand and a cooperative trackpad, and it punishes anyone short of either. Click, then click again works with a mouse, a finger, a stylus or the keyboard.
• No clock, and no “game over”. Nothing counts down and nothing is ever lost. A board you cannot finish today is still waiting tomorrow.
• Undo and hints without limit. Press Undo as often as you like, so nothing you do can spoil a game. Press Hint as often as you like too, and the hint says why: which row or column it was reading, and what that rules out. A hint that silently fills in the answer teaches you nothing, so mine explain themselves in plain words.
• The puzzles print. Sudoku, Daily Sudoku, Cat Sudoku, Daily Cat Sudoku, Word Search, the Mini Crossword, Nonogram and Bingo all have a Print button that lays the board out large on paper for a pencil. The full list is on the printable puzzles page.
• Nothing is stored on a server. There is no account, no sign-up and no email address to hand over. Your text size and your half-finished boards are held by your own browser, on your own device. I never see them and I could not look them up if you asked me to.
• No pop-ups and nothing that covers the game. Nothing jumps over the board, nothing plays sound by itself, and nothing blocks the page until you subscribe.

Free to play

Every game here is free, with no trial and no payment. The site does cost money to run, so advertising sits off to the side of the board, clearly marked, well away from the squares you are working in. It does not move, it does not make a sound, and it does not cover anything.

For families, too

If you are looking for something your mum or dad can enjoy on their own, this site is for you as much as for them. Send them a link. There is no setup, no account and nothing to install.

It keeps growing

I add games as I finish them, and what people write in and ask for genuinely decides what I build next. Start with large-print Sudoku or browse all of the free games.

Reaching me

Write to me at [email protected]. It comes to me, not to a support desk, and I read every message. If a game is broken, unreadable, or too fiddly to control, that is the most useful thing you can tell me, and several changes on this site began as exactly that kind of email. The contact page says what is worth writing about and how long a reply usually takes.