About Played Properly

Played Properly is a small review site for free browser games, run from the UK by three people who have been playing this kind of game since the days when Travian was the whole genre. We publish one edition per season with five games in it, and nothing goes in until it has had at least three weeks of our evenings.

The name

Most browser-game lists are written after an afternoon with a press kit. We wanted the opposite: play the thing properly, on a normal account, for long enough to hit the mid-game and see what the shop really does. Played Properly is a promise about the method, and the testing page is where we keep it.

Why five

A useful review takes weeks. A list of fifty games takes an afternoon and a press kit. We would rather tell you about five games we have lived with than fifty we have glanced at, and we would rather update a small list honestly than let a long one rot.

What counts

• It has to run in a normal browser with nothing to install.
• It has to be free to register and to play properly. A shop is fine; a paywall on the core loop is not.
• No real-money gambling of any kind. We do not review casino, slot or betting products and never will.
• It has to have been live for at least a year with an active English-speaking community.

How we are paid

The "Play" buttons are affiliate links. If you sign up through one the publisher may pay us a small commission; that is the hosting bill and the coffee. Publishers cannot buy a place on the list, do not see reviews before publication and have never been offered a better score for anything. If a game stops meeting our rules it comes off, whatever the link earns.

Editions

Autumn 2026 is the second edition. The first, in summer, had three games; two of them were re-tested and dropped this time because their monetisation changed. Old editions are not kept online, because an out-of-date review is worse than none.