How it works

Every game here runs in your web browser, on your own device. This page explains what gets downloaded, how the sound is made, where your scores are kept and the few things a server does. What the site records about you is listed in full in the privacy policy.

It runs in your browser

The games are built with ordinary web technology: React draws the menus and three.js draws the 3D graphics. There is no plugin and no install. The home page loads only the list of games. Each game is a separate download, fetched when you first open it, so a game you never play costs you nothing.

If a game's graphics are interrupted, for example when a graphics driver resets or too many 3D pages are open at once, most games try to restore their 3D view by themselves. If that fails, the page shows a short message and reloads rather than leaving a blank screen.

What is downloaded

The 3D models, images and sounds are files served by this same site. Apart from two Google services, every request your browser makes while you use the site goes to this site's own server and nowhere else. Google Analytics counts visits to pages, and Google serves the ads, which appear on the home page and never inside a game. Pages like this one use neither.

How the sound is made

Most sound effects are not recordings. Each one is written as a short list of tones and bursts of filtered noise, and your browser builds the sound as you play, which keeps the download small. A few sounds are real recordings, kept on this site: Minesweeper's explosion, Go-Kart's engine and crowd noise, and the instruments in Piano. Those files are credited on the credits page. Every sound is measured against one loudness standard, rather than set by ear, so switching instrument or game does not jump in volume.

Where your scores live

Your best scores and settings are kept in your browser's own storage, on this device. There are no accounts, so there is nothing to log in to and nothing that follows you to another device. Your display name is generated for you unless you choose a nickname yourself. "Erase everything" in the account menu clears what the site keeps on your device (apart from your language, light or dark, Quiet mode and sound choices), and so does wiping this site's data from your browser settings.

The few things a server does

Most games never need a server once they have loaded. A handful do, each for a reason.

• Guess the Word keeps the hidden word on the server, so the answer cannot be read out of the browser. It needs a connection.
• Chess works out its opponent's moves on the server, so the bot's play cannot be tampered with. It needs a connection too. An online game between two people is held on the server as well, which is what keeps the rules and the clock fair for both of you; it lives only in the server's memory and is gone when the game ends.
• Gobbler, the online races in Go-Kart, the rooms in Guess the Word, online chess and the shared rooms in Piano pass messages between players through a realtime server.
• A Piano recording you choose to share, and a Pixel Art drawing you submit, are stored on the server. A person reviews each one before it can appear in a public gallery.
• The Feedback button sends what you type to the person who runs the site.
• The site counts how many devices played each game and for how long, with no way to tell who they are.

How changes are made and checked

Changes are checked by a large set of automated tests, including browser tests that open the pages at phone-sized screens. A release is built once, tried on a test copy of the site, and then that same build is moved to the live site.

Keep reading

• Privacy policy: exactly what is recorded, and what is not.
• Credits: attribution for third-party assets.
• The games: back to the home page.