None of these are ours. Three are free-to-play browser games from other studios - the Great War fought by thirty people at once, a military simulator with hundreds of real vehicles, and castles you can run from a phone - and the fourth is a doorway to several dozen other free games.
All four open in the browser already in front of you. Nothing to install, no launcher, nothing to patch. Each entry gives the same four things: what it is, what it is good at, how long a sitting runs and what it costs.
The usual version of this page lists fifty games and leaves you no wiser about a single one. Four is few enough that each entry was written after playing. Four conditions had to hold:
Europe in 1914 carved up between thirty players, moving in real days rather than turns. The alliances decide it, and the alliances do not hold.
Aircraft, tanks and ships from the 1930s onward, modelled closely enough that learning one vehicle properly is an evening's work. The heaviest thing on this page.
Castles on a shared medieval map with troops that march in real time, built so it works properly on a phone as well as a desktop. The most portable game here.
Not a game but a door into a few dozen, sorted by genre and all playable in the tab you are already in. Useful when none of the other three is what you wanted tonight.
The session column is where the real difference lies. These four vary much more in the rhythm they ask for than in what they are about.
| Game | Genre | A typical sitting | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supremacy 1914 | WW1 Grand Strategy | Two or three checks a day | Desktop and laptop. |
| War Thunder | Vehicle Combat | 20 to 40 minutes | Desktop and laptop. |
| Lords & Knights | Medieval Strategy | Short visits through the day | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
| Esprit Games | Browser Games Portal | As long or short as you like | Desktop, laptop and tablet. |
All four are free to open and free to continue with. All four also sell something - a premium account, a currency, a vehicle, a faster timer - because that is how they are paid for, and stopping at the word "free" would leave out the half that matters.
What we looked for is whether a non-paying player is still playing the same game, and in each of these they are. Money buys speed and convenience far more often than it buys an advantage. Decide what you are willing to spend before the shop is in front of you.
A browser game is the only kind you can start on one machine at lunch and pick up on another in the evening without moving a file. The convenience is paid for in a few ways:
Lords & Knights, if you want something you can keep an eye on from a phone during the day. If you want the opposite, War Thunder will take an evening and most of your attention with it.
No. All four are played in the browser. A couple offer an optional desktop client that nobody has to use.
They open, but they expect a mouse and some space. A phone is fine for a glance, a laptop for a session.
Mostly, since your progress has to live somewhere between visits. That account is on the developer's site and has nothing to do with this one.
Not to play them. Every one sells optional extras, which is how it funds itself, and none of them locks the interesting part behind a purchase.
They are not. All four belong to other studios; they are on this page because the people who built the site play them.
A handful of free browser games worth an evening, kept up by the people who run this site. None of them ours.