Games worth passing on

What Zippi is

Zippi is a small library of classic games, made with care, that open the moment you arrive. No download, no account, no waiting.

Every game here is built for this site: Solitaire and Sudoku, 2048 and Bubble Shooter, word games and picture puzzles. Each one saves your place on your device, works on a phone or a desk, and tells its own story further down the page: where it came from, how it changed, and why people still play it.

Play is older than us

People have always played. The Royal Game of Ur, a race game for two, was buried in a royal tomb in Mesopotamia around 2,500 BC; its rules survive because a Babylonian scribe wrote them down on a clay tablet more than two thousand years later. Card patience was first described in print in Germany in 1783. Sudoku’s grid, the word search and the nonogram are younger, but they have already been passed from newspaper to newspaper, classroom to classroom, and screen to screen.

“Play is older than culture.”Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 1938

The historian Johan Huizinga argued that play is not a break from culture but one of its roots: rules, fairness, taking turns, winning and losing well. We think a good game is a small piece of that inheritance, and worth making properly.

Why we make games

Because a good game gives something back in a few minutes. The moment a Sudoku row falls into place, the chain reaction when twenty bubbles drop at once, the last card sliding home in FreeCell: these are small, honest joys, and they are the same for a child, a student on a bus and a grandparent at the kitchen table.

We want Zippi to be the place you open for those minutes. Not to fill your day, but to make a pause in it better.

Play, rest and a clear head

A game can be a good break or a bad habit, and the difference is mostly in how it is designed. So we make choices that keep play on your side:

• Nothing asks for your attention on arrival. No pop-ups, no sign-up walls, no countdowns. You look first and start when you are ready.
• Games end. Every game has a natural finish, a result and a New game button. There are no daily chores, no streak penalties and nothing to buy.
• Sound is yours to control. One switch, top right on every page, and M on the keyboard. It remembers your choice.
• Calm screens. Motion is short and purposeful, and it switches off when your device asks for reduced motion.

Puzzles like these ask for focus, patience and planning, and many people find them a restful way to think about something else for a while. We don’t make health claims for them; we just try to make the time you spend here feel well spent.

How we build

• Open and play. The game is the first thing on the page, on any screen from a small phone up.
• Every control in the same place. Numbers at the top, modes above the board, tools and New game below it, in every game, so your hands learn the site once.
• Fair puzzles. Sudoku and nonogram puzzles have exactly one solution and never need a guess. Every Mahjong deal can be cleared. FreeCell deal numbers match the classic Windows ones.
• For everyone. Keyboard controls, readable contrast in light and dark themes, and colour-blind shapes where colour matters.
• Light. Games are hand-written for the web, with no game engines, so they load fast on slow connections.

Fair leaderboards

A leaderboard only means something if it is honest. On Zippi the scores are checked by our server, not trusted from the browser: 2048 and Bubble Shooter games are replayed move by move, daily puzzles and Bubble Shooter games are timed by the server from the first move, and results faster than a person can play don’t count. You don’t need an account; add a name if you like, or play as Anonymous.

Keeping the classics alive

Many of these games have no single owner. They were shared at card tables, printed in newspapers, carried between countries and rewritten for every new computer. Each game page on Zippi records that history with sources, so the story travels with the game.

We also keep the rules faithful. Klondike plays as Klondike, FreeCell deals match the numbers players have traded for decades, and where our version adds something, the page says so and dates it.

Where we are going

A growing shelf of classics, each one finished properly before the next one starts: well-made games, their history and a world leaderboard that gives regular players something to aim for. We add games slowly and keep improving the ones we have; every change is listed in the changelog and on the game’s own page.

How the site is run

Zippi is free to use and is kept free by advertising. We count page views and game starts to see which games people enjoy; you never need an account, a name or an email address to play. The leaderboard stores a random ID from your browser, your country and the name you choose, if any. The details are in our privacy policy.

Say hello

Ideas for a game, a rule we got wrong, a bug on your phone: we read everything. Write to us through the contact page.