01
Stellarium Web
The real sky above your town, tonight, in your browser. Not a game, and the best way to end an evening here.
- Made by
- Stellarium Labs (open-source Stellarium project)
- Typical sitting
- 10–30 minutes
- Our score
- 5/5
night sky · editorial · 8 picks
Night Sky: browser games worth an evening
Night Sky is a short, opinionated guide to ordinary games that run in a browser tab: a real planetarium, two word puzzles, two drawing games and a few slow stories. We play them, write about them and link to the official sites. Nothing here is embedded, sold or sponsored.
What kind of evening is it?
02
Universal Paperclips
You are an AI told to make paperclips. It starts with one button and ends somewhere much stranger.
- Made by
- Frank Lantz
- Typical sitting
- Several hours across a few evenings
- Our score
- 5/5
03
Quick, Draw!
Six doodles, twenty seconds each, while a neural network tries to guess what you are drawing.
- Made by
- Google Creative Lab
- Typical sitting
- 5 minutes
- Our score
- 4/5
04
Contexto
Find the secret word by meaning, not spelling. Every guess tells you how close in context you are.
- Made by
- The Contexto team
- Typical sitting
- 5–15 minutes
- Our score
- 4/5
05
Gartic Phone
Telephone with pictures: write a line, draw someone else's, describe the next drawing, then watch it all fall apart.
- Made by
- Onrizon
- Typical sitting
- 15–30 minutes
- Our score
- 4/5
06
A Dark Room
A cold room, a fire to light and a world that unfolds one line of text at a time.
- Made by
- Doublespeak Games (Michael Townsend)
- Typical sitting
- Around 2–4 hours in total
- Our score
- 5/5
07
2048
Slide the tiles, merge equal numbers and try to build a 2048 before the board fills up.
- Made by
- Gabriele Cirulli
- Typical sitting
- 5–15 minutes
- Our score
- 4/5
08
Semantle
Guess the secret word with a similarity score as your only compass. Harder and stranger than Contexto.
- Made by
- David Turner
- Typical sitting
- 10–30 minutes
- Our score
- 4/5
Plan a short session
Good evenings with games usually have an end in sight. Tell us how long you have and what you fancy, and we will suggest where to stop. It runs on this page only and saves nothing.
How we choose
Every game on this page runs in an ordinary web browser, can be tried without paying and comes from its own official website. We favour games with a natural end to a sitting, a calm pace, or something you can share with people you know.
We are not paid by any developer, we do not use affiliate links and we do not embed the games here: every card links to the maker's own site, which opens in a new tab. Names and trademarks belong to their owners, and the pictures on this page are our own illustrations, not the games' artwork. Facts were checked against the official sites in November 2026; features and platforms can change, so the official page is always the place to confirm.
If you know a browser game that belongs here, or spot something out of date, write to hello@orreryhall.com.