A big list of the best tiny games on the internet
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 39, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If youre new here, welcome, get ready for gadgets this week, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, Ive been writing about Surfaces and other tablets, chatting with some internet friends about the fall of Red Lobster, reading about Magic: The Gathering and the history of emoji, watching MoviePass, MovieCrash, weeding my patio with a literal flamethrower, and for some reason, eating a lot of popcorn. Like, a lot of popcorn.
I also have for you a bunch of cool new gadgets, a new YouTube channel youre going to love, a new-old Mario game, a clever new AI tool for Windows, lots and lots of fun new games, and a whole bunch more. Lets do it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into this week? What should everyone be into? What is so awesome that everyone needs to know about it right this second or else? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, and tell them to subscribe here.)
- The Sonos Ace headphones. Im generally very happy with my Bose QuietComfort Headphones, which are kind of beaten up but still work great. Even for $450, though, the Ace look really nice I dig the super-minimalist vibe, almost like theyre an early prototype the company shipped. Really curious to see the reviews on these.
- The new Surface Pro. If youre one of the why cant my iPad do more stuff kinds of people, the device you want might not be an iPad. It might be the new $999 Surface Pro, which Microsoft promises has great performance and battery, comes in cool colors, and has a really nifty new keyboard attachment.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Another great reboot from Nintendo, which is remarkably good at sprucing up old Mario games and getting me hooked on them all over again. Like my colleague Andrew Webster wrote, the Switch is turning into a retro Mario RPG machine, and its awesome.
- Howtown. I love a good no mystery too small show, which is why Im a religious consumer of things like Search Engine and Underunderstood. This new YouTube channel, from two excellent creators, is an insta-subscribe for me. And they have some really fun guests lined up!
- Microsoft Recall. One of the cooler AI apps Ive seen and maybe the best argument yet for why you need an AI PC. Sure, an app that tracks everything you do on your computer feels slightly creepy, but thats kind of already how your computer works. This just makes it useful.
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Fury Road is one of the coolest movies ever made, if you ask me, and by all accounts, Furiosa is a worthy if slightly slower and less, uh, bonkers follow-up. Its also apparently the rare prequel that adds something to the first flick; guess which two movies Ill be watching this weekend.
- Stompers. Im currently very into silly, chill, less-intense workout apps, and this is such a funny one. You compete with your friends to walk more, and when youre winning, your friends get, like, virtual bananas to slow you down. Delightful!
- Canva. Canva launched a big redesign this week (at least, if you can find a secret portal), which comes with a bunch of clever AI features and some new ways for your IT department to give Canva money. I dont use Canva much personally, but the folks I know who do tend to love it. This should be good news.
- Hellblade II. This game sounds genuinely terrifying and theres not much I love more than a game that makes me scream out loud. The sound design appears to be particularly intense, so if you need me this weekend, Ill be holed up in the dark scaring myself half to death.
- The Daylight DC1. Half of me rolls my eyes at anyone whos like, Gadgets are bad. Heres a gadget to save you from gadgets. And its $729! But I love the retro-future aesthetic here, Im hopeful the screen tech works, and Ill be keeping an eye on this thing for sure.
Last week, I asked you to share your favorite minigames on the internet. Things you can play in a few minutes. Maybe you play once a day, maybe you play it 50 times in a row while youre on the train to work. Did I ask for this because selfishly Im sort of bored of Quordle and Name Drop and wanted new stuff to try? Partly! But I also suspected Im not the only one who loves these games.
Oh boy, was I right. Thank you to everyone who responded! I got a ton of great suggestions, and I want to share as many of them as I can. First of all, here are the ones you recommended the most often:
- Coffee Golf. A new five-hole golf course to play every day. (This was the most recommended game of the week, by a lot, and I can see why. I love it.)
- Bandle. Guess the song, one instrument at a time.
- Travle. Get from one place to another, one adjacent country at a time.
- Connections. Find the four words that belong together.
- Framed. Guess the movie, one screenshot at a time.
- Wordle. Cant forget the OG!
And here is a list, in no particular order but very slightly categorized, of some of the other great game recommendations I got. First up, there are the games that Id describe as Wordle, but not exactly:
- Worldle. Guess the country by its shape.
- Summle. Put the numbers and operators in place to make math equations work.
- Episode. Like Framed, but for TV shows.
- CineQuote. Guess the movie, one line at a time.
- Murdle. Solve a mystery with only a few clues.
- Waffle. Rearrange the board until all the letters are in the right place.
- Knotwords. Like sudoku meets a crossword puzzle.
- Strands. A word search with a theme.
- Queens / Pinpoint / Crossclimb. The three new daily games on LinkedIn, which are all pretty fun.
- Housle. Guess the house price by the photo.
I heard about a bunch of Immaculate Grid games, which are a huge new category and are very fun:
- Immaculate Grid. The original, I think? Guess the athlete, across lots of sports.
- GeoGrid. Guess the country.
- Cinematrix. Guess the movie.
And last but not least, there were the other games. Not all of them are daily, but I think they fit the its a thing you can do a couple of minutes at a time, so Ill allow them:
- Pedantle. Find words in a redacted page to figure out which Wikipedia entry it is.
- Chromes Dino Game. Best use of a broken webpage ever.
- Contexto. Try to guess the word just by guessing other words.
- Football Bingo. Turns out, I dont know soccer as well as I thought.
- Untitled Game. It loads a blank webpage. You figure out what to do next.
- Random battles on Pokemon Showdown.
- Universal Paperclips. You make paperclips. And sell them. As many as you can. Forever.
- Box Office Game. The game gives you a weekend and some numbers, you try to guess the most popular movies.
I now have about two-thirds of these games bookmarked in my browser, and I will be playing them all every day forever. I may never be productive again. Thanks again to everyone who shared their favorite games, and I hope you find something fun to play!
David Imel is a man of many talents. He uses weird, old photography equipment to make truly gorgeous panoramic photos; he makes great videos going super duper deep into how we talk to each other online; he hosts podcasts and makes videos with the rest of the MKBHD crew.