While all facets of the gaming world were dealt harsh blows in one way or another, a severely underrated way of playing was readying an unbelievable comeback. I’m talking about browser-based gaming, which is now home to bangers your ’90s or ’00s-forged brain wouldn’t believe.
Half-Life 2, yes, that Half-Life 2
Many years ago, Valve’s magnum opus was released for Japanese arcade machines as a greatly neutered on-rails title. This is not that. Browser-based Half-Life 2 is just astounding, even if you aren’t one of the millions who grew up looking at it as one of the most beautiful-looking, and hardware-demanding titles of its time.
On top of base Half-Life 2, players can also enjoy the Half-Life 2 episodes through that link, meaning that it’s entirely possible we’ll one day see Portal and Portal 2 show up as playable in your browser.
Messenger is unbelievably gorgeous
Messenger is probably not the best name to pick for a game meant for Internet browsers, but the devs probably just had the confidence to do it because they knew it was that good. It is a game about delivering messages, but what makes it shine is its unique world and stunning visuals, featuring a stylized look that’s still leaps and bounds ahead of what you’d expect from a browser game.
It takes place in a tiny, round world, which reveals more of its beauty and uniqueness as you explore it. Messenger came out in 2025, but has only more recently begun to capture the attention of a larger audience, baffled by how long this absolute masterpiece of exploration, game design, and relaxation went unnoticed.
Deadshot looks better than most shooters I grew up with
If you’re an FPS fan who grew up with the likes of Quake and Unreal, you also grew up seeing browser games as incapable of showing you more than a few stick figure-shaped sprites before the whole thing slowed down to a crawl or crashed. Welp, Deadshot is incredibly fast—you likely won’t even catch its loading screen.
Out of nowhere, you’re in a pretty neat-looking map, which you’ll barely get to admire as the game’s frantic action kicks off. While Deadshot.io definitely doesn’t look like the prettiest game in the Battlefield franchise, its simple, fast, and modern gameplay makes it a very tempting alternative to any game that takes more than five minutes to install.
Cookie Clicker remains legendary
Cookie Clicker remains the greatest game of its kind and also a beautiful antidote to the genre’s trappings. Don’t let its premise—clicking one cookie until you become the alpha cookie kingpin—fool you into thinking this is a simple game: it contains twists and turns that won’t fail to surprise you.
Also, even though it looks like the most obvious pick for a browser game on the list, Cookie Clicker hides a dark side, one that’s totally worth exploring without getting spoiled.
Town of Salem
One of the oldest browser IRC-based games is Mafia, also known as Werewolf, depending on where you began playing it. Originally, it was a simple-yet-highly-addicting text-based game where the entire game was about talking it out to discover the traitor inside the group. Town of Salem brings it to the third dimension, making the sleuthing experience much more immersive and fun. I didn’t expect this kind of game to still be thriving in browsers, but I’m glad it is.
The entire PS1 library is available in a browser
This isn’t just one game, but an entire catalog that no one thought Internet browsers would ever be able to play. Over 20 years later, any browser is capable of running the entire PS1 catalog, and I think not enough people are aware of that. At a time when video game preservation is in constant risk, the best reassurance one can get of a good future for old games comes in the form of many sites that just let you play old games, and for free.
I only mentioned the PS1 specifically because the 3D barrier was always the one that seemed impossible for a browser, but if that’s not your thing, you can play pretty much any retro game from your childhood via browser, as well.
