Boss fights and arcade classics, rebuilt in pixel art.

Why arcade games still work

Arcade games from the late seventies and eighties were built around a simple deal: easy to understand in ten seconds, hard to master over ten hours. Indie developers revived that deal with boss fights as the centrepiece — a single, memorable opponent with attacks you learn to read. The games here take both traditions and rebuild them in a browser with pixel-art sprites, scanline shading and synthesised chiptune sound effects.

The boss fights come first. Boss Rush is a bullet-hell shooter with three three-phase bosses and a tiny hitbox. Pixel Knight is a one-room action-platformer against a Stone Golem, an Ember Dragon and a Lich King. Crypt Survivors is a survivor game where you build a mage and slay a boss. Alien Assault is a fixed-screen shooter that ends with a mothership. After those, the arcade classics — Brick Blaster, Neon Serpent, Dot Dash and the falling-block puzzler Blockfall — each have two or three stages that change the rules, such as indestructible bricks, stone obstacles, or a faster set of chasers.

Your best score for every game is stored on your device, and when a run ends you can share a score card or send a friend a challenge link to beat it. If you want something calmer, the puzzle shelf has sliding tiles, memory games, mazes and jigsaws.