About Deckchair Games
Deckchair Games is 41 games that run in your browser: cards, puzzles, word games, and a separate section for small children. There is nothing to install, no account to create, and no trial that runs out. Open a game, play, close the tab.
Why it exists
Most free game sites want an email before you can play, bury the game under three screens of adverts, or spend the first minute trying to move you into an app. Here the game is the site. It loads straight away, it works with a thumb or a keyboard, and the page around it stays out of the way.
How it is built
Every game is written from scratch and plays out on your device. Boards are generated in your browser, and your progress, streaks and high scores are kept there too, which is why they survive a closed tab but not a cleared cache.
Signing in is optional. It exists so the same progress turns up on your phone and your laptop, and it merges what is already on this device rather than replacing it. Nothing on the site asks you to sign in before you play. There is also no way to search for another player by name, which is deliberate on a site with a children’s section.
The games were drawn for a phone screen first: buttons big enough to hit standing up, boards that fit a narrow screen, and controls that stay out from under your thumb. A keyboard and mouse work just as well.
Playing with other people
25 of the games can be played against somebody else while you are both sitting there. You start a table, they open the link, and neither of you needs an account. If nobody has taken a seat after fifteen seconds the computer takes it, and hands it back the moment a person arrives, so an empty table never leaves you waiting.
There is no free-text chat. This site has a children’s section, and moderating open chat is a promise one person cannot keep honestly, so it is not offered.
The children’s section
The kids area has its own games, its own colours and bigger buttons. It asks a child for nothing: no account, no name, nothing stored, no timer, and no way to lose. One advert sits on its front page and none beside a game.
How it pays for itself
Advertising, and nothing else. There is no premium tier, nothing to buy and no data sold on. Adverts sit in fixed places around the page and never inside a play area, so you will not find one covering a button or interrupting a game. What is collected, and by whom, is set out in full on the privacy page.
Who makes it
I am Ari Hlynsson. I live in Iceland and I write every game on this site myself. Deckchair Games is published by g60 labs, a company with one employee. I design the games, write the code, draw the pieces, keep the small server running behind the two-player tables, and read the email.
I built the site because the free games sites I could find all did the same things. They asked for an email before letting me play, put the game several screens down under an advert larger than the board, and spent the first minute trying to move me into an app. I wanted the opposite and could not find it, so I wrote it.
Nothing here is licensed in or taken from an asset library. I wrote all 41 games from scratch, which is why they all handle a phone the same way, why the rules pages describe what this code actually does rather than a generic version of the game, and why a fix comes back from the person who wrote the bug.
Being one person is also the reason for what the site does not do. There is no free-text chat, because I cannot promise to moderate it next to a children’s section. Nobody can look you up by name. And games arrive one at a time, because I build and test each one by hand rather than generating it.
I write about the decisions behind the site in How it is built: why there is no chat, how the daily puzzle works without a database, and the friend list the game server never sees.
If something is broken, a rule is wrong, or you want a game added, the contact page reaches me directly.