None of these are ours. They are four free-to-play browser games built by other studios, picked because no two of them want the same thing from you: a war fought in real hours, a cockpit that takes a night to learn, a picture to search, and a dogfight that is over before the kettle boils.
All four open in the browser you are reading this in. No installer, no launcher, nothing to keep patched. Each entry gives the same four facts - what the game is, what it does well, how long a normal sitting runs and what it really costs - so you can skip the three you do not want.
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:
One village on a map covered in other villages, and armies that take real hours to arrive anywhere. It is twenty years old, it has never needed a sequel, and the diplomacy still matters more than the troop counts.
Aircraft, tanks and ships from the 1930s onward, modelled closely enough that one vehicle takes an evening to learn properly. Much the heaviest thing on this page, and the only one with a flight model.
Hidden-object scenes that pay for a Victorian factory empire. Two unrelated games welded together, and the join holds: finding things gives you money, and the money gives the finding a point.
Capital ships and asteroid fields, with a hangar you slowly fill as you work out which hull suits you. The fastest game here: a fight starts and finishes while the kettle boils.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tribal Wars | Tribal Strategy | Short visits, a few a day | Desktop and laptop. |
| War Thunder | Vehicle Combat | 20 to 40 minutes | Desktop and laptop. |
| Uptasia | Build & Hidden-Object | 15 to 30 minutes | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
| Star Conflict | Space Shooter | 15 to 30 minutes a match | Desktop and laptop. |
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 hull. 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:
Uptasia, if you want an hour with nothing at stake and something to show for it - the puzzles pay for the factories and the factories give the puzzles a point. If you would rather something was shooting at you, Star Conflict has you in a fight inside two minutes.
No. All four play in the browser. One or two offer an optional desktop client that nobody has to use.
They load, but every one of them assumes a mouse and some screen. A phone is fine for a quick look; a laptop is where they are actually enjoyable.
Usually, because the game has to keep your progress between visits. It is a free account on that studio's own site and has nothing to do with any account here.
Not to play. Each sells optional extras, which is what funds it, and none of them hides the interesting part behind a purchase.
None beyond the people who wrote the page. All four belong to other studios and are listed on their merits.
Four free-to-play browser games, written up by the people who run this site. Not one of the four is ours.