Screen time, spending and small print worth reading

Free is never quite free

Every game on this floor pays its way somehow, and the review for each one says which: advertising around the page, cosmetics bought with earned coins, an optional supporter tier, or nothing at all. None of them sells a random-chance box, and none of them involves real money changing hands on an outcome.

Where money is involved it is for appearance only — a colour, a hat, an advert removed. If you ever find one of these games selling an advantage or a randomised reward, tell us: it will come off the floor.

Keeping a short game short

• Pick the shelf that matches the time you actually have, not the time you wish you had.
• Prefer games that let you stop: our clean-stop mark exists for exactly this.
• Set an alarm rather than trusting a game to end. Arena games in particular do not.
• If a game nags you to return on a schedule, that is a design choice about your attention, not a favour.

Before a child plays

Three of the twelve put you in a public room with strangers, and a fourth has open chat with a filter that is switched off by default. Each review flags this in the snags. Where a game offers private rooms, use them: the drawing game in particular is a different experience with four people you know.

Several sites here show an advertising consent notice on the way in. Declining the optional partners changes nothing about how the game plays, and we would decline them every time.

Your eyes and your hands

Arcade games reward tension, which is not something you want to carry for an hour. Look away from the screen regularly, sit back rather than forward, and if you are playing on a phone in one hand, swap hands now and again. None of this is medical advice — it is simply what happens to us when we test too long in one sitting.