Browser games
History
Browser games are games that can be played online. Browser games are often free to play and are built on web technologies. In 1996,
One of the first websites to host games was Newgrounds, which continues to publish and host games to this day. It was originally created by Tom Fulp to combine two sites where he hosted his own games, including one of the first browser games, Club a Seal.
Newgrounds became a popular website to publish and discuss games. Many of these games were controversial and took on unconventional topics. Alien Hominid was another popular title by Fulp. Another popular title was Meat Boy which became a successful indie game as Super Meat Boy.
Bejewelled is a popular game title that began on the web, first developed for the web under Microsoft's gaming website using Shockwave and Flash and since has been released on many platforms.
Bejewelled exemplifies the genre of "casual gaming", which was popular with early browser games before being adopted to mobile devices.
In 2006, Molleindustria (the creators of p5.play) released McDonald's Videogame, which was a satirical look at the political practices of the McDonald's corporation, creating controversy in their depiction.
End of Flash
In 2007 the iPhone was released and it was announced that it would not support Flash. A few years later, Adobe announced it would stop releasing new versions of Flash and would discontinue in 2020.
Although Flash continues to be a robust tool for creating games, new technologies were introduced in the 2010s, culminating with the release of HTML5 in 2014, which introduced graphics and audio support for HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
Rise of HTML and JavaScript games
In the 2010s, web games have often used basic technologies to create new and unqique game dynamics.
- Google Maps Play Cube (2012) uses google maps data to create the environment for a game.
- Candybox (2013) is a very simple resource management game that became very popular on its release.
- A Dark Room (2013) is a complex RPG with simple graphics.
- Freerider (2015) allows users to create their own levels through drawing.
- agar.io (2015) is a simple game that uses multiplayer to great effect.
itch.io and indie game sites
New game engines like Unity and Godot make it possible to build games for the web that are designed to work on multiple platforms.
Sites like itch.io allow indie developers and creators to publish and distribute games that are built for the web or downloadable in a similar model to early Flash game sites like Newgrounds.