Browser games that actually work offline, tested
We took the browser games that “offline games” articles recommend and web-app lists feature, opened each one online, cleared the browser’s ordinary cache, switched the network off and reloaded. 19 of 40 came back, two of them online multiplayer games that load but cannot be played offline. For 4 more the page opened but the game did not, and 17 showed a browser error page.
Disclosure: we make MANXLAB, a set of free browser games built to work offline, and our own games were tested the same way. They are listed separately and are not counted in the figures above.
These are the results of the first test, on 28 September 2026. The games are now retested every month: see the current list of browser games that load offline.
Key findings
- We tested 40 browser games that “offline games” articles recommend or web-app lists feature. With the ordinary browser cache cleared and the network off, 19 came back, two of them online multiplayer games that load but cannot be played without a connection. For 4 the page opened but the game, hosted on another site, did not; 17 showed a browser error page.
- Of the 30 games on pages that recommend, tag or mark them for offline play, 13 loaded again offline. Those pages are itch.io’s “offline” tag, PlayBrain’s blog and offline page, No Internet Game, dinogame.gg, BSS Commerce and SimiCart. Counting Tigren and Juego Studio as well, which praise offline mode in general terms, it is 14 of 31.
- This is a stricter test than some of these pages promise. dinogame.gg tells readers to load a game while online, leave the tab open and not refresh until they are back online; none of the five games we took from its list of twelve came back after an offline reload, which is the case its own advice warns about. No Internet Game says its dinosaur game reopens offline and that the rest of its catalogue needs a connection to start; our result for it, 1 of 5, matches what it says. We did not test whether a game already open in a tab keeps running when the connection drops.
- The 5 failures most likely to be a timing problem were retested with a full minute to prepare. 5 still failed.
- Being installable is not the same as working offline. 5 games had a web app manifest and a service worker, the parts that let a site install like an app, and still failed.
- Offline-games sites can be ad-heavy while online. PlayBrain: 7 of 7 loaded offline, and its pages contacted 14–20 advertising and tracking companies while online; No Internet Game: 1 of 5 loaded offline, and its pages contacted 8–15 advertising and tracking companies while online.
- 4 of the games that loaded offline contacted no advertising or tracking company at all.
- On itch.io, where the “offline” tag is chosen by each game’s developer and usually refers to a download, 0 of the top 5 tagged web games reopened offline in a browser. None of the five pages registered a service worker, the part a site needs in order to reload without a connection. Several of these list Windows, Mac, Linux or Android downloads, which we did not test.
- All 8 MANXLAB games, which we make, loaded offline; they are not counted in any figure here.
The 19 that loaded offline
Sorted by how many advertising and tracking companies the page contacted while it was online. “Loaded offline” means the game came back to its start screen after a reload with the network off. We did not play the games, so it does not show that a game can be played through offline; two of the 19 are online multiplayer games that cannot be.
The 4 where the page opens but the game does not
The site’s own page came back offline, but the game inside it is hosted on another site and was not saved for offline use, so the game box shows the browser’s offline page. We confirmed each by eye.
| Game | Install parts | Ad & tracking companies, online | Notes and who recommends it | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2048 (No Internet Game) | Yes | 11 | the game, hosted on another site, did not come back; No Internet Game blog | screenshot |
| Minesweeper (No Internet Game) | Yes | 15 | the game, hosted on another site, did not come back; No Internet Game blog | screenshot |
| Run 3 (No Internet Game) | Yes | 12 | the game, hosted on another site, did not come back; No Internet Game blog | screenshot |
| Slope (No Internet Game) | Yes | 8 | the game, hosted on another site, did not come back; No Internet Game blog | screenshot |
The 17 that did not
Each showed a browser error page when reloaded offline: usually “No internet”, and “This site can’t be reached” for games whose own offline code tried and failed. Several of these offer a separate download for offline play; we tested only the browser version.
Our own games
All 8 MANXLAB games loaded offline and contacted no advertising or tracking company in our classification. On the test day each loaded Cloudflare’s analytics beacon, which the public company list files as a utility rather than tracking but the EasyPrivacy block list flags, and Riviera Rush loaded Google Fonts; the site has since moved its fonts to its own files. We name both so you can weigh them yourself. These games are not counted in any figure above.
| Game | Install parts | Ad & tracking companies, online | Notes | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqua Lung | Yes | 0 | screenshot | |
| Neon Tokyo | Yes | 0 | screenshot | |
| Nova Strike | Yes | 0 | screenshot | |
| Queenstown Jet | Yes | 0 | screenshot | |
| Riviera Rush | Yes | 0 | screenshot | |
| Snoblast | Yes | 0 | screenshot | |
| Snow Canyon | Yes | 0 | screenshot | |
| Wakeline | Yes | 0 | screenshot |
Not tested
21 recommended games were not tested, so this page says nothing about whether they work offline. 19 are on sites whose terms forbid automated access, which we respected: idev.games (5), Weekly Arcade (5), GameZipper (5), Squaredle (1), Wordle (New York Times) (1), Chess.com (1), GeoGuessr (1). 2 more were left out for other reasons: Hextris, whose official site did not resolve on the test day (it has since come back, with an expired security certificate); an Opera 2048 demo whose robots.txt blocks all automated visits. Each site’s wording is quoted in SAMPLE-NOTES.md.
How we tested
Which games
On 28 September 2026 we searched “offline browser games”, “games that work offline in browser” and “pwa games offline” (with an AI assistant’s web search tool, US results; not Google or Bing directly, whose terms forbid automated searching), and took the games category of the two web-app directories that were live that day. From each result page we took the first five playable web games it recommends, in page order, and removed duplicates. Pages that named no web game, or were unreachable, contributed nothing. Every source page was saved on the day. The rule, and every judgement call, is in SAMPLE-NOTES.md.
The test
Each game was opened in a fresh, empty Chrome profile (Chrome 154, headless, from a US connection, reporting a normal Chrome version and with its automation flag hidden), given 20 seconds to set up any offline support, reloaded once so that support could take over. We then cleared the browser’s ordinary cache, switched the network off and reloaded, so a game passes only on what the site deliberately saved for offline use. The ordinary cache may hold a copy for minutes or days, but the browser can drop it at any time. Nothing was clicked, except the “Run game” button itch.io puts in front of its web games, which we pressed after every load so each game was judged on the game itself. A game counts as loaded offline (the results file calls this “works offline”) when the page and the game came back: no browser error page, and every frame that showed the game online showed it again. Empty ad slots offline do not count against a game. We then checked every result by eye against its screenshot; where the automatic rule and the screenshot disagreed, the screenshot decided, and each such case is listed with its reason in overrides.csv.
The 5 failures most likely to be a timing problem, including every game with offline support built in, were tested again with a full minute to prepare. 5 of 5 still failed.
Install parts, and the companies counted
“Install parts” (the installable column in the results file) means the page had a web app manifest with a name, start address and icon, and a registered service worker. We did not try installing any game, and browsers apply their own rules. Advertising and tracking companies are counted from the requests the page made while online, using the same open company list as our free-game trackers study. That list names some companies more than once and misses others, so read the counts as approximate; the study explains the limits.
What this does not show
- It is one test, on one day, in one browser. Games change.
- It tests the browser version only. A game that fails here may have a download that works offline.
- “Loaded offline” means the game reached its start screen. We did not play any game, and some features, like online scores or multiplayer, need a connection.
- It is a reload test. A game already open in a tab may keep running when the connection drops. We did not test that, and it is all that some of the pages we sampled promise.
- We took the first five web games from each page. Where a page lists more, our result covers those five and not the whole list.
Data and scripts
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page: results.csv, results-60s-retest.csv, candidates.tsv, and the scripts offline-test.cjs (Node and Playwright) and classify.py (Python), with the by-eye decisions in overrides.csv. Every game’s offline screenshot is linked in the tables. To run them: offline-test.cjs reads candidates.tsv and tests only the rows marked OK; classify.py also needs analyze.py and entities.json from the trackers study, placed in the same folder, and the Public Suffix List in a ref folder beside them, as that study’s README.txt describes.
Cite or embed
APA
Klebl, C. (2026). Browser games that actually work offline, tested. MANXLAB, Sterling Digital Partners. Retrieved from https://manxlab.com/research/offline-browser-games/
Chicago
Klebl, Chris. “Browser games that actually work offline, tested.” MANXLAB, Sterling Digital Partners, 28 September 2026. https://manxlab.com/research/offline-browser-games/
BibTeX
@misc{klebl2026offlinegames,
author = {Klebl, Chris},
title = {Browser games that actually work offline, tested},
howpublished = {MANXLAB, Sterling Digital Partners},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
url = {https://manxlab.com/research/offline-browser-games/},
note = {Data CC BY 4.0}
}
Wikipedia
{{cite web |last=Klebl |first=Chris |title=Browser games that actually work offline, tested |url=https://manxlab.com/research/offline-browser-games/ |website=MANXLAB |publisher=Sterling Digital Partners |date=28 September 2026}}
Link to it
<a href="https://manxlab.com/research/offline-browser-games/">Browser games that actually work offline, tested</a>, MANXLAB, 2026
Changes to this page
- 8 October 2026. After outside reviews, we changed “worked offline” to “loaded offline” throughout, because the test reloads each game and does not play it. We added what dinogame.gg and No Internet Game themselves say about offline play, limited the dinogame.gg finding to the five games we tested from its list of twelve, and removed the statement that no web game on itch.io can pass. We removed the chart label saying the PWA lists make no offline claim, listed the pages behind the 13 of 30 figure, and renamed “Installable” to “Install parts”. We updated the Hextris note, added citation formats, and said what the published scripts need in order to run. No result changed.
- 7 October 2026. Fonts moved to our own files; privacy link added.
Corrections
If we got a game wrong, email [email protected] with the game’s address. We will retest it and date any correction on this page.