Why we are building our own arcade

Bored.com started as a directory. We collected weird, funny, useful and time killing websites in one place, so you would never run out of things to click. Most of what we link to is made by other people, and we love that. But over the last few months we have been quietly building our own little arcade, right here on the site.

No downloads. No sign ups. No ads. You open a tab, you pick a game, you play. This post is a quick tour of what is already in the bored mini arcade, why we kept adding more, and what is on the way.

Why build our own games?

The honest answer is that we got jealous. We spend a lot of time playing the games we link to, and after a while you start thinking, I could try that. So we did. We started with the obvious classics, kept the scope small, and tried to make each one feel snappy.

The other reason is control. When we link out, we cannot fix bugs, we cannot remove ads, and we cannot guarantee the link will still work next year. If a game lives on our own site, we can polish it, update it, and keep it free forever. That feels like the kind of fun the old web used to have.

What is in the arcade right now?

A handful of small games, all playable in seconds. They share the same pixel art look, the same chunky black borders, and the same idea: you should be able to start playing in one click.

Snake is the classic. Eat the apples, do not bite your tail, get longer. 2048 is the tile sliding number puzzle that eats lunch breaks. Memory is the simple pairs game with timed runs and a share button. Daily word gives you a fresh five letter word every day, with a deterministic shuffle so everyone in the world gets the same puzzle.

For reflexes there is Aim trainer and Reaction time. Both are very small and very replayable, the kind of thing you open between meetings. Liquid sort is a relaxing colour sorting puzzle. And then there is Pet pals, our take on the idle clicker: pat the pet, earn hearts, unlock new pets, watch the numbers explode.

How we make them

The stack is boring on purpose. Next.js for routing, React and Tailwind for the UI, plain TypeScript for the game logic. No big game engine. Most games fit in a single file. State lives in local storage so your best score sticks around between visits.

Every game uses the same shared shell, so the header, the home button, the instructions popover and the share button all behave the same way. That keeps the look consistent and lets us add new games faster, since we are not rebuilding the chrome every time. The pixel art is a small sprite system we wrote ourselves, which is why everything looks like a friendly old game boy demo.

What is coming next

A lot. We have a long list of small games we want to build, grouped into a few flavours.

For your brain there are word and logic games like word ladders, anagram blitz, a tiny crossword, typing sprints, sudoku in a 6x6 grid, lights out, the 15 puzzle, math sprint and a friendly minesweeper. For reflex lovers we are working on whack a mole, a stroop test, colour match, a doodle hopper, an avoid the spikes runner and a rhythm tap. And for lazy creative moods we have a pixel painter, conway's game of life, a sand sandbox, a spirograph, and a synth grid you can play like an instrument.

Not every idea will make the cut. Some will be too clunky on phones, some will be too similar to games we already have, and some will just not be fun once they exist. That is fine. We would rather ship ten good ones than thirty mediocre ones.

The bigger plan

The plan is simple. Keep the arcade tiny, keep it free, keep it weird. Add one or two new games whenever we have a quiet weekend. Polish the old ones when something annoys us. And keep the rest of the site, the directory of fun websites, alive in parallel.

Bored.com is supposed to be the place you go when you have nothing to do. Sometimes that means linking you to a strange site you would never have found on your own. Sometimes it means handing you a tiny puzzle we built ourselves and getting out of the way. Both are good.

If you want to try the games yourself, the entrance is right here: bored mini arcade. Pop in, beat your best score, tell us if something is broken, and check back soon. There will be more.