Adventure Games

Adventure games take you from one place to the next: you jump through levels, try to get out of a locked room, follow clues or solve puzzles with whatever you find. There are more than 2,600 free games, and they open in your browser with nothing to download. What changes a lot from one to the next is the pace. Some ask for quick reflexes, others for patience and a willingness to click on everything.

Platform: the biggest part

More than a thousand games are in Platform, and it's where you find out which style you like. There are classic jump-and-run games with characters like Mario or Sonic (Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario Crossover 2), nonstop climbers like Icy Tower and Infinite Stairs Online, and others designed to make you fail gracefully, like Level Devil. Jump and Collect adds the goal of gathering coins and items along the way, with the Subway Surfers versions and Fireboy and Watergirl 3, where you control two different characters. Jump and Shoot mixes jumping with gunfire, Metal Slug style.

Escape, mystery and graphic adventure

Here you think more than you jump. In Escape you have to get out of a closed space using the objects around you; the best known are the Saw Games, with characters like Bart Simpson, Gumball or SpongeBob, plus versions starring popular YouTubers. Mystery sticks to haunted houses and ghosts, mostly Scooby-Doo (Creepy Castle, Pirate Ship of Fools). Point-and-Click means stories where you talk to characters and combine objects, with licenses like Dexter's Laboratory, Danny Phantom and Kim Possible. Role-Playing (RPG) is the smallest group: characters that level up and games built on gradual upgrades, like Sven's Quest and Monster Master.

Where to start

If you want something straightforward, head to Platform and try a classic Super Mario: you see the level, you jump, you reach the flag. If you want a bit of puzzling without the hassle, a Saw Game: short rooms with few objects. For a slow-paced game with a story, a graphic adventure. And if you like frustrating challenges, Level Devil.

With Fireboy and Watergirl 3 it helps to know one rule: each character can only survive their own element, so Fireboy can't step in water and Watergirl can't touch lava, and you switch between them as you go. In point-and-click escape games, also pay attention to numbers, notes and paintings: they often hide a code that a lock asks for later.

Tips for playing

In escape and graphic adventure games, click on everything: any object in the scene might be needed later, and the answer is often to combine two things you're already carrying. If you get stuck, go back to earlier rooms, because something you couldn't use before may work now. In platformers, learn the character's jump first, since every game has its own: some float, others drop like a stone. And in the hard ones, don't rush. Almost all of them are beaten by memorizing the pattern.