No Smartphone, No Problem: 7 Great Mobile Games To Play In Your Browser

There are some great iPhone games and fantastic Android games out there, but what if you don’t have an smartphone? Don’t worry, you don’t need to be left out. There are a lot of fantastic mobile games that you can play in your browser too!

Angry Birds

Let’s start with the biggie, the most downloaded game in the history of smartphones. Angry Birds was launched for the web as an experiment by the Google Chrome team to show off their browser’s HTML5 engine, but it works on almost any browser with HTML5 — so that means every modern browser. Just head to chrome.angrybirds.com and you can start playing. In case it doesn’t work on your browser, download Google Chrome and it’s guaranteed to work. Psst, Justin has also shared a cheat to unlock all Angry Birds levels so you don’t need to go through the easy first few!

Bejeweled 3

Candy Crush fans, meet the game that started it all! Bejeweled was the game that invented the “get three gems in a line” gameplay, and it was a hit in the world of Flash games. But it really developed a following on the smartphone with its many iterations. You can play the classic original and the second part, but why do that when you can just move on to Bejeweled 3, the finest in the franchise. There are four game modes to play: Classic, where you keep going till no moves are left; Lightning, where you collect time gems to charge up bonus rounds; Zen, which is an endless game mode; and Quest, which has 40 mini-games based on Bejeweled.

Flow Free

Flow Free is a favourite here at MakeUseOf, making the list in several round-ups and garnering original reviews too. Who would have thought that a simple puzzle game would end up being so addictive. But as Tina notes in her Flow Free review, this game is more than just fun, it teaches you problem-solving, cooperation and strategy. Connecting one colour to another of its kind across a grid seems simple enough when written that way, but when the grid is 10×10 and littered with 10 or more colours, see how easy you find it!

Plants vs. Zombies

Plants vs. Zombies is still one of the most fun things you can do on mobile, but it’s not restricted to mobile any more! While the fantastic free-to-play sequel isn’t available online, you can play the original PvZ in your browser courtesy of game developer PopCap. It’s the same gameplay, same graphics, and all the same joy you would get from the mobile version. The only thing missing are the other game modes, like Survival, but you still get the campaign mode so have fun!

Amateur Surgeon 2

The new Amateur Surgeon 3 slices up your funny bone, but its predecessor was no slouch either. In fact, if anything, I prefer the humour of Amateur Surgeon 2, another one of Adult Swim’s games that entertain and offend. You will be playing as Alan Probe, an accidental genius surgeon, and playing a virtual game of operation that’s riddled with the weirdest cases known to man. Couple that with the funny scenes and the challenging gameplay, and you have a winner on your blood-stained hands.

Cut The Rope

Much like how Google touted Angry Birds to show off its browser, Microsoft went with Cut The Rope to demonstrate the capabilities of the new Internet Explorer. But hey, it’s playable on any browser with HTML5, so you don’t need to use IE. Cut The Rope is the perfect mixture of candy, cute monsters and physics puzzles. To play, head to the Cut The Rope site and hit the “Give it a try” button at the bottom of the page to load the game.

Ridiculous Fishing / Radical Fishing

Ridiculous Fishing was one of the best Android games in 2013, but what you may not know is that developer Vlambeer first made it as an online Flash game. It doesn’t have the same refined graphics of the mobile game, but it’s the same gameplay and tons of fun. There is a certain calming nature to guiding your fishing line into the depths of the ocean, dodging fish, and then grabbing as many as you can on the way up. And once you hit the surface, take out your shotgun and start blasting!

Optimize Your Browser

Some of these games require HTML5 to play, and as long as you run a modern browser, you should be fine. Others need Flash and it’s best to optimize performance for Flash games. But the bigger question is, do you prefer to play browser games or mobile, and why?