About RetroWorld

RetroWorld is a free arcade that lives in your browser. Nothing to download, nothing to sign up for. Open a game and play.

A small studio, making games for fun

RetroWorld is an independent studio with one job: build browser games worth ten minutes of your day, and give them away. There is nothing to buy here, no ads and no sponsorships — the arcade is not a business and is not trying to become one. If a game is fun, that is the whole return.

Every game is original

The games here borrow the ideas that made arcade games great — falling blocks, a growing snake, a bat and a ball — and nothing else. Every name, every pixel of art and every sound was made for this site. There are no emulators, no copies of anyone's characters, and no "play the original" links. Game rules aren't anyone's property; the look and the name of a specific game are, and we leave those alone.

All games, names, artwork, sound and code on RetroWorld are © RetroWorld.

Any control you've got

Every game works with arrow keys or WASD, with a mouse, with swipes and taps on a phone, and with a controller plugged into your browser. On a touch screen the games that need buttons show an on-screen pad.

Scores stay on your device

Your best scores, trophies and streaks are saved in your browser only. Clear your site data and they're gone; we never see them. The only optional measurement is Google Analytics, which runs only if you accept it on the first-visit notice.

How the site pays for itself

Tips, and nothing else. If the arcade is worth something to you, a coffee on Ko-fi goes towards the next game. It is entirely optional: tips buy nothing, unlock nothing, and every game stays free and identical either way. There are no ads and nothing for sale, and there is no plan to change that.

Credits

A few free resources made by other people sit inside the games. Thank you to them:

• Word lists in the word games come from SCOWL by Kevin Atkinson (Copyright 2000-2018 by Kevin Atkinson), which also draws on 12Dicts by Alan Beale, Moby Words II, VarCon, Ispell (Copyright 1993, Geoff Kuenning) and the UK Advanced Cryptics Dictionary (Copyright (c) J Ross Beresford 1993-1999. All Rights Reserved.). The full notices are in the SCOWL copyright file. Some rarer words come from Webster's Second International (1934), which is in the public domain.
• The world map in Map Pin is drawn from Natural Earth, which is in the public domain.
• Fonts: Bricolage Grotesque and Figtree, both under the SIL Open Font License (licence, licence).

Contact

Found a bug, or want a game added? Email hello@retroworld.fun.