Feature
Play without a name
7 of the twelve never ask who you are. Here is what the rest want, what you get in return, and why it is worth being fussy about this.
An email address is the usual price of a free game, and it is charged before you know whether you like the thing. It is the single best filter we know of: a game confident enough to let you play first is usually a game with something to show you.
The ones that ask for nothing
You can be playing 2048, Bad Ice Cream 3, QWOP, Territorial.io, Diep.io, Gartic Phone or The Password Game within seconds of the page loading. No email, no password, no confirmation link.
The ones with an optional account
Five cabinets offer an account without demanding one, and in each case it buys something specific: saved records and leaderboard places on the stacker, kept progress and unlocked skins in the arenas. You can decide after you have played, which is the right order.
| Cabinet | Sign-up | What an account buys you |
|---|---|---|
| 2048 | No account | Nothing at all — you are in from the front page |
| Bad Ice Cream 3 | No account | Nothing at all — you are in from the front page |
| QWOP | No account | Nothing at all — you are in from the front page |
| Territorial.io | No account | Nothing at all — you are in from the front page |
| Narrow One | Account optional | Optional: it saves progress or puts you on a leaderboard |
| Jstris | Account optional | Optional: it saves progress or puts you on a leaderboard |
| Diep.io | No account | Nothing at all — you are in from the front page |
| Deeeep.io | Account optional | Optional: it saves progress or puts you on a leaderboard |
| Gartic Phone | No account | Nothing at all — you are in from the front page |
| Starblast.io | Account optional | Optional: it saves progress or puts you on a leaderboard |
| Drednot.io | Account optional | Optional: it saves progress or puts you on a leaderboard |
| The Password Game | No account | Nothing at all — you are in from the front page |
What to watch instead of sign-up
Two things matter more than the account question, and both appear before you play. The first is the advertising consent notice: several cabinets here list a startling number of partners, and declining the optional ones changes nothing about the game. The second is chat — a few of these put you in a public room with strangers, which each review says plainly.
Our rule of thumb
If a game wants an email before it will show you anything, close the tab. There are eight things on this floor that will not.