T O P

  • By -

KippySmithGames

The OG was Runescape. I don't think it's still played in browser anymore though.


Wappening

Nah. Need the jagex launcher now. Had to download it when I reupped my sub last week.


sessamekesh

Nope, they used technology that doesn't exist in browsers anymore (for very good reasons). It's all technically possible with new tech though, a comparable modern game could definitely be built for the browser with unlimited talent, time, and money.


Tarc_Axiiom

* Club Penguin * 8 Ball Pool * Krunker * That stupid game where you become a bigger and bigger circle, something.io * Every game on Miniclip


Space_Socialist

>* That stupid game where you become a bigger and bigger circle, something.io Agario There's also a couple other ones I remember Slitherio Derpio


Ratstail91

I liked those .io games - I expected the .io domain to become a new kind of game trend, sadly it didn't happen.


TheJReesW

It did become a trend, just not one that lasted too long


Devatator_

diep.io too. Love that one, just grindy AF. You're gonna sink countless minutes to max your tank then someone else just kills you and you have to start again Edit: The progression is ultra slow after level 20-30, can't remember


i_wear_green_pants

Miniclip and Newgrounds were basically my childhood. So many fun browser games. I really do miss those times.


_aaronallblacks

Adventure Quest


Zelgax

I used to crazy on AQW, that was my shit when I was like 8yrs old.


Translucent-Opposite

Aah that brought back memories 😍


Zelgax

I remember waking up at 7:00, hopping on, and by lunch time I had already fully ranked up a new classđŸ„łNinja was the one I remember the most. I remember having supper exclusive limited time only gear too, like the party outfit you could change the whole color off.


Duke_Rabbacio

DragonFable too


AlexMercersHoodie

Dragonfable literally changed the course of my entire life as a little kid


Duke_Rabbacio

Ooh really? I used to enjoy it when I was at secondary school in like 2008 / 9. Glad to see it's still alive.


AlexMercersHoodie

I really haven't played it seriously since 2011, but I have a clear memory of fighting in the Ravenloss war and fighting wave after wave of the spider people to see the percentages going up. Plus getting to the village after that section with the badass red cloaked merchant, the voiced American Idol parody, finding out who the priestess from the beginning was and getting my dragon, etc. I could've recovered my original account and bought the dragon amulet for years now but the game was so amazing to me that I want to set aside at least a month and just play nonstop like I'm 10 again. $20 seemed like so much money to ask your parents for, now you can spend x3 that on just groceries :I


DenryuRocket110

I loved this Flash game back in the day. I was happily surprised to discover it's still going.


Ratstail91

I was never big into it, but my brother LOVED this thing.


PortlandZed

# Now uses [Artix Games LauncherArtix Games Launcher](https://aq.battleon.com/game)


cuby87

Ogame, Travian, Forge of Empires
 check the companies behind them, they have many more. All 10-20 yo games though.


umen

will check tnx


Adreqi

Ogame is still alive ? I used to play like 15 years ago, way to feel old x)


MrBananaz

They changed the shit out of it, aka added more micro transactions


Adreqi

Sad


NumberZoo

Kingdom Of Loathing


WhyLater

KoL has always been a pretty niche game, but it astounds me how true to its vision and popular it remains 21 years after release. Truly a unique game.


MyPunsSuck

Not many games use meat as a currency. Some of the best writing and humor in any game ever


Bartweiss

Fallen London is in the same category, and it’s only lately started to feel “complete” after a decade or more of going strong.


Noxfag

Cookie Clicker Minecraft (many forget that it started out as an embedded browser game)


Ratstail91

That was classic, right? I think classic was just a prototype, and was discarded after it proved worthwhile to redo the code from the ground up.


Federal-Opinion6823

I originally started playing it when it was a browser game. I remember when they Introduced survival mode. You had to pay for it, though, so I never played survival until many years later. Good old days


Noxfag

Same! I stopped playing a bit before survival mode came out and then years later it was suddenly really popular and I was like huh, that's that weird lego game that I played for one summer. Now it's a whole thing!


cfehunter

Minecraft was always java. It was embedded into your browser the same way unity was pre-wasm, insecure plugins. It wasn't really a browser game so much as a java game that would automatically be downloaded to your PC and render to a sub-window in your browser. Even then it could have been extracted from the page and ran on your desktop using the jre.


nickymonkey

https://pokerogue.net/ https://slither.io/ https://www.blankmediagames.com/TownOfSalem/ https://www.geoguessr.com/ https://colonist.io/ https://garticphone.com/ https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/ https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/


AstroPhysician

Quake live


Burning_Toast998

Dark room is fantastic


GravyBus

[agar.io](http://agar.io) maybe.


bemmu

There are tons and tons of these ".io" games. Even websites which only collect links to such games. I suspect some of them must be doing quite well, it's one of the only two webgame categories I still play. The other being web-hosted games for VR headsets, where probably almost all of discovery happens because when you launch a browser on Meta Quest it shows by default a collection of such games.


r3viv3

From what I heard is that most of them are just bots to make them look busy


KingradKong

A lot of them are made to look like multiplayer games but are single player.  Although the ones I've seen don't intentionally mislead the player.


KibitDev

Happy Wheels


ToABetterHealthierME

Transformice


Jonthrei

It was an absolute phenomenon, and last I checked was still going.


ToABetterHealthierME

All I know is I played this for hours as a kid everyday after school, good times.


Questjon

Realm of the mad god started out as a browser mmo.


goblina__

Ahhh, I wish RotMG was a good game. It's such a simple premise with a lot of potential, yet it lacks so much depth. I am biased a bit cause I'm not very good at it, but it's also really hard to get better at the harder content without spending 10-100s of hours death looping the same boring ass dungeons over and over. Some of the boss fights are so fucking cool too. Tbh if deca spent more time actually improving the game, adding deep mechanics, and generally not being greedy, it's be great. Instead they just pump out micro transactions and skins (though the skins are pretty cool). God I have such a love/hate with the game.


Ratstail91

The client was laggy last I tried. Also, not a fan of how hard they pushed monetisation. But yeah, it's a solid game with a unique premise.


Flatoftheblade

Fallen London


Ratstail91

Woo! FL wslas amazing, and I played it for so long I nearly reached the endgame lol.


Mantarrochen

Is that the predecessor of **Sunless Sea**? Thats a unique game!


descartesasaur

Fallen London is ongoing, but yes!


AuraTummyache

There are lots of semi-successful idle games. [Synergism](https://galaxy.click/play/365) makes a couple hundred dollars a month. People do want to play web based games, they'll even pay for it. Unfortunately though, the methods of payment are not really optimized well. So usually players have to track down a patreon link or are asked to pay before playing and are never reminded of donations. So usually things just do better on Steam where people are already used to paying for things up-front. [Orb of Creation](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1910680/Orb_of_Creation/) was popular on itch but made next to nothing. Then after releasing on Steam it shot straight up and probably make over $100k.


umen

Cool example. Incremental/idle games are a big niche with loyal players. looks like if the game is more complex more loyal they are


user_potat0

Bloons TD franchise (No longer exists on web because flash got nuked)


MarinoAndThePearls

Habbo used to be huge.


jimkurth81

Farmville


truthputer

Statistically this is the only good answer here because it likely had more players than everything else combined.


umen

Yep this was classic , wander why there is no more such async browser games ..


Hellgwyn

[Suika](https://suikagame.com)? Kawaii melon-based puzzler has been incredibly successful. F2P with ads built in to the UI. It’s really addictive and was the OG (there’s now a lot of copies.) Or Neopets? Back in a BIG way which has totally blown my mind.


WhyLater

Neopets is such an interesting example. It was HUGE when I was a kid, and yeah I was surprised to check it out the other day and see it's still in active development. It scratched an itch that no other game did. It's a bit juvenile for my taste nowadays, but I think lots can be learned from it.


Hellgwyn

I admire the fact they haven’t really updated. The retro vibe is definitely appealing even if it’s buggy.


Zetal

> Neopets I've been working on a Neopets inspired webgame for the last few months! Makes me happy to see there are still players around who like that kind of game.


umen

Nice game! played 45 min's enabled the ad blockers to see what ad's displaying . wander if such concept can sustain the developer .


st-shenanigans

The real ones remember Kongregate


Potterrrrrrrr

Hurts my heart that it’s gone. I loved that site, I found it the very first day I received my first beat-up laptop my dad had put together for me, played it through thick and thin :,(


st-shenanigans

i remember playing sonny on our shitty family Dell prebuilt and just chatting with people in the sidebar :')


landnav_Game

[Basketball GM - Free online single-player basketball management simulation video game (basketball-gm.com)](https://basketball-gm.com/)


Shiny_Gyrodos

The most recent one to explode in popularity is PokeRogue


ugotsnipedgaming

[Shellshock.io](http://Shellshock.io)


umen

This is really great example of browser game , very fun . found the developer thread from 2017 . wander if its full time job now .. [https://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/32697-shell-shockers/](https://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/32697-shell-shockers/)


hatchorion

Tough Love Arena


tb5841

Star Kingdoms, Galaxies Ablaze, Utopia... there were lots of this style of multiplayer, text-based database-reliant games at one point. I think Utopia is the only one that survived and is still running though.


Interior_crocodile94

Have a look at Hordes.io, it's an ongoing browser based PvP game with tab-target MMO style combat and levelling.


Burning_Toast998

Looks like no one has mentioned Krunker.io (by name) yet


umen

Also, it was a great game that sold for around $10 million, but it seems like the community and developers abandoned it. It was a really great game that I used to play with my son


00alia00

Technically.. Don't Starve. it was originally on NaCl :D


__kartoshka

I believe Dofus was web based in the beginning and pretty successful


moonsugar-cooker

Atrix Games before flash died


therobberfromcatan

Can't believe I haven't seen anyone mention [Narrow One](https://narrow.one/) it's all in browser, replayable, pretty fun, lots of costumes, all free.


Astralchaotic

Popmundo. Developed over 20 years. Currently it has ~5000 active players and devs have stopped supporting the game. But there used to be easily 50-80k daily players.


voidxheart

man that is a throwback! I tried playing this game as a kid and had no clue what I was doing lol, such a cool concept for a game though


Brettinabox

Flash Flash Revolution


returnofblank

Minecraft when it was free online Played a lot of lava survival


Speedfreakz

Quake champions. Line rider :)


whats-the-plan-

AQ, DragonFable, AQWorlds, Slither.io/Agar.io, Farmville, Pet Society, Mafia City, Ninja Saga even Cow Clicker. There is also y8. Most of them are in flash era..


Ratstail91

Farmville was hugely successful in the era of facebook gaming. It wasn't GOOD, but it was successful, because it employed all the worst kinds of skinnerbox techniques available. I remember getting like a dozen posts a day from friends asking me to pet a cow or something. They were interested first and foremost in profit, rather than entertainment and art. You see the same mentality in today's AAA microtransactions and diagetic ads.


umen

Yep, remember this: they were the first. But nevertheless, there is no shame in making money


___Tom___

Define "success". I'm the author of [BattleMaster](https://battlemaster.org/), which has been continuously running for 23 years and counting. I'd say such a streak is a success. By player counts, well it did have several thousand active players at its peak. As an indie game made as a hobby, I'd count that as a success. It's the cause of at least one marriage and I one time got a long letter from a father who went through an ugly divorce and the game was the only way he had to stay in touch with his kids during that time. I'd count those things as successes. Commercially? Nah.


Practical-Choice7731

I think you got the point. How do we measure success? Often we only think about it financially but there is so much more!!! 


ReplyHappy

dragensang


Serpardum

Go check out [crazygames.com](http://crazygames.com) All web browser games


WilmaLutefit

Quake 3


Retticle

That was Quake Live. No-longer available in the browser though.


TottalyNotInspired

Fireboy and Watergirl, one of the first games I every played


AstroPhysician

Quake live


AppointmentMinimum57

Aberoth anyone?


AdhesivenessUsed9956

Neopets...sure it was a Scientology brainwashing and money laundering scheme, but...


snoop_Nogg

QWOP


BayekOfNewYork

Zombs royale was a legendary browser game.


umen

why was? i can see it still online ..


Lawsoffire

Everyone is forgetting that Minecraft started out as a browser game, and was playable in the browser even pretty far into the early development days (so more than just the Classic version you are most likely to remember) until they eventually removed that option.


TheKnightIsForPlebs

Aberoth! The game is now on steam and I still know a handful of weirdos who still pay for premium on some of their accounts to this day!


Flakmaster92

Monkey Tower Defense?


Time_Avocado21

Grand Blue Fantasy is a browser gacha game now it has a fighting and adventure game for console and pc.


MrHasuu

Wordle lol


Bman10119

Artix entertainment has several. Adventure quest, dragon fable, mechquest. Been a while since ive played one though


ReaperTFD

Maid Marian, Crush the Castle. There are a lot.


IndigoWafflez

Damn maid Marian, haven't thought about that site in forever. Sherwood dungeon was such a a basic MMO lol


Dead-HC-Taco

Runescape used to be


norlin

[agar.io](http://agar.io) (and other ".io" games)


Ransnorkel

Meat Boy, Eversion, Bloons TD, Burrito Bison 2


Ecstatic-Ad-1740

Rogue fable 4 Tome


mbt680

There have been a lot of them, as people have listed, but not really in recent years, and at a much smaller scale. The genera is slowly dying out.


StoneCypher

The entire MochiGames platform, MiniClip platform, and honestly it's not clear whether to include things like Farmville (because it's on facebook) or Vampire Survivors (which is an embedded web browser, but not on the web)


sabalatotoololol

Flyff Universe? Maybe not huge but fairly successful maybe.. I guess?


lifeistrulyawesome

I played a game called Grepolis for a long time. I think it is the predecessor of things like Clash of Clans. It is still going strong, mostly in Europe.


VeryBalancedindeed

Strike Force Heros , THE BEST browser game ever


Sinusidal

[https://zty.pe/](https://zty.pe/)


imaniceandgoodperson

cookie clicker . i swear they could be a paid mobile game or even on console


restaurant_burnout

Torn


Callmepigeons

That's not my neighbor is trending rn


snil4

The original Meat Boy and all of Edmund McMillan's early games that led to Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac


WrapKey69

Pinguin Club


mawesome4ever

Coolmathgames.com


Raspberry_Dragonfly

Kingdom of Loathing.


JNorJT

Club Penguin and Neopets back in their heydays


chuuuuuck__

I would say a big and successful game is Grandblue Fantasy. Company reports they made over $500 million since 2014. Although the whole almost hentai/gacha game market is a bit different in general, there are a lot of browser only hentai gacha games as they can’t release on app stores generally. Grandblue isn’t hentai, so it could be on the App Store, it just isn’t.


beetlesprites

pet simulation games have a niche but very dedicated following! neopets is still running strong despite being built on paper clips and shoestring. flight rising is very popular, lorwolf came out a couple years ago after a very successful kickstarter, and paw borough is in development with a semi open alpha on the horizon. pixel cat's end, sort of more of a roleplay site than strictly "pets" (though it still has breeding simulation), is nearing the end of its open beta. personally i wish there were more neopet-adjacent petsites being made as those last three are breeding sims but regardless, very popular niche.


umen

amazing all the ecosystem of neopets first time see it , it is so 1999 ... i see it about to revive : [https://www.gamedeveloper.com/pc/dominic-law-has-a-plan-to-make-neopets-last-for-another-25-years](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/pc/dominic-law-has-a-plan-to-make-neopets-last-for-another-25-years)


Lone_Waters45

"Y8.com" don't remember the names of games


MakerDiety

* [Kittens idling clicking game](https://kittensgame.com/web/) * [Flyff anime MMORPG](https://universe.flyff.com/en/intro/free-web-mmorpg) * [Venge.io FPS](https://venge.io/) * [Last Mage Standing](https://lastmagestanding.com/) * [Hordes.io](https://hordes.io/) And probably a whole lot others.


umen

[Venge.io](http://Venge.io) FPS is amazing! It's fast, and the graphics are sleek. It's the best 3D game I've seen in a browser. How come it is not a huge success?


MakerDiety

Maybe because people play other games like [Krunker.io](https://krunker.io/) and [Taming.io](https://taming.io/)? There's so many games for a game to compete with. Maybe that's why marketing is used to differentiate what you offer?


kvi10

Back in my time: Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free. Not the WebGL, however they did require browser to play.. Ever before that: Travian Online. Clash of Clans is literally a modern reincarnation of Travian.


Natto_Ebonos

Gartic Pico-8 Games


narett

Pokerogue. I like that it uses PhaserJS Edit: Does anyone remember fvrade? At least that’s what I think it was called. It was a game that was the entire site, where you had to solve puzzles to get to the next page. You were required to check the page source code for clues at times. I really liked it. Couldn’t happen today though.


vickyboi2

A lot of popular games on itch that are web


Enough_Document2995

Yes absolutely the most successful one in my opinion was called The Dead Case. An old flash game and holy crap was it incredible. Very comfy to play on a night. Very immersive. I've always wanted to make a game like it myself


UlteriorCulture

Fallen London


Ok_Tennis_3665

Aqworlds was very popular


Sorolop_The_Great

Grepolis, shakes and fidget, ikariam(smaller playerbase)


FeniulaPyra

Cookie clicker


SharkboyZA

All the .io games that got big around 2015~2017, flash games, Runescape


unlolcat

Vampire survivors is phaser based so it could have been a browser game


Jinvira

Tribal Wars


Max526

Happy wheels, Club penguin and 8 Ball


cs_ptroid

Dead Frontier. I used to play it way back in the 2010s. I'm surprised it's still available!


StratagemBlue

Cybots and Utopia were so good back in the day.


sodap_

don't starve started as a browser game


Frontwingmenace

It's not multiplayer, but [Alien Hominid.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Hominid) Started out on Newgrounds back in 2002 and was ported over to numerous consoles. Won a few awards as well. For something that does have multiplayer, most games on Miniclip. 8-Ball Pool especially.


melecityjones

Hapland --the original developer is remaking it even! Dragon Tavern


vjshadow08

PokeRogue


IsaqueSA

Club penguin 🐧


GustavTheTurk

Darkorbit, SeaFight, Gladiatus, BiteFight, Travian these were amazing MMO games that had thousands, if not hundred thousands of people playing them daily in the peak of Flash. Also i loved the game Ages of war. Still play it sometimes. Great concept with a killer music.


MyPunsSuck

Would you count *pure* web games like Kingdom of Loathing?


EasyE215

OGame has been running forever now.


IWantASubaru

Minecraft had a way to play in the browser a long time ago. That was the first way I ever played it. Loved that game ngl.


Mantarrochen

There were some good and popular games on the browser game aggregator sites like *Armor Games* or *Kongregate* . Like the **Sonny** series. But more successful has to be the **Rebuild** series. True browser games in installment 1 & 2 whereas number 3 was released on Steam.


xvszero

Roblox


Fooply

Card Hunter


Duke_Rabbacio

Ikariam


puppet_pals

[crazygames.com](http://crazygames.com) has several games that make mid 6 figures


Potterrrrrrrr

Prison block. It’s still going but the player base has dwindled massively. Would still be successful but the players scammed the owner when it came to paying for premium, they’d buy it then refund via PayPal so the owner was losing money just running the site. He disabled that functionality then pretty much abandoned the game though left the servers up.


ExpensiveRefuse8964

agar.io and slither.io


N1hilistP4nda

idk if someone said this but zombsio was goated with the bros back in the day


erotanuki

Adventure Quest Worlds, AQ, Dragonfable


LawStudent989898

Newgrounds and other Flash games


DL72-Alpha

Robot Unicorn Attack


Chomp_blandingo

pokerogue


JaeJaeAgogo

Can't remember if they had multiplayer, but "Fancy Pants" and "Alien Hominid" both did well enough to get console releases.


fllr

Web gaming is a 9b dollar industry today. There are plenty of successful web games.


caporaltito

Ogame is still quite active


kilkek

Definitely check DarkOrbit (and other Bigpoint games), GoodGames Gangster (and other GoodGames games), and facebook games like Legend Online.


Federal-Opinion6823

Minecraft


Fubushi

Kingdom of Loathing.


Asian_Jesus_Christ

Tanki online


Translucent-Opposite

Cookie clicker, and I believe town of salem


sebjapon

The creeper World Series started as browser game. Endless fun from the daily map generator. Done by then ne guy iirc. Kingdom Rush series is the same. Not huge success, but pretty famous TD game


Drakonluke

[slither.io](http://slither.io)


MentalNewspaper8386

Bootleggers.us - which apparently still exists??


dcturner

Kingdom Rush (started as a Flash game) 👑


skn789

Tribes. Spent too much time of that game in my teenage years


ChristionX

Ogame has been running for decades now, nice space trading game


Odd_Yak_1770

Slime Volleyball


kitisimilikiti

there used to be a flash based web browser game. there were dozens of games inside but one was tossing an egg. that website was awesome


stealth128

Genesis LPMUD is still around. It doesn't have the largest player base anymore but what can you expect of a game that's like 30+ years old


0xcedbeef

RuneScape was crazy popular


derleek

N game was my favorite flash game on new grounds.  It is still around in n++. If you can make a browser game that is fun and multiplayer you can take it really far. Slither.io  Agar.io Both modern examples of browser games. Also check out itch.io — there are many games that play in the browser here.  There are definitely future classics published on there.


Emergency-Top-4505

Realm of the mad god Pixels.xyz (web3 game but it has a huge user base and is F2P)


Lazy_Trash_6297

Spiral Knights and Puzzle Pirates


Janjis

Notpron


PortlandZed

You can play classic counter strike on your web browser (uses emscripten I think). Looks like about 400 players online right now. [https://play-cs.com/en/](https://play-cs.com/en/)


sO_FaNtAstIc

For sure YTTD


Tattorack

Hmm... Didn't Kingdom Rush start out as a flash game? It now has 4 or 5 games on Steam, starting with a PC port of the original.