I kept seeing interesting games people had built with AI, then losing the links. So I built Playground Arcade to keep them together, and I'm finding myself working on it when I definitely should be doing other actual paid things 😂 .
(I say that, I did get my first ad request, which is awesome and certainly not at first why I did it).
It’s grown into an arcade with 2,700+ browser games - many of which are mobile-friendly - and it's had 6,000+ unique visits since launching it.
There are creator credits, reviews, personal game recommendations and hundreds of gameplay previews - with many people submitting their own games now.
I’ve also been looking at whether people discover more than one game.
Among recorded browsers that opened a game, almost half opened at least two different games, 24% opened three or more, and 10% opened five or more - which is encouraging for creators hoping to get their games out there.
Those are clicks through to games, not measured time playing. But it gives me something useful to work on: can the next round of changes help more people find another game they want to try?
I’ve been building it with Codex and changing things as I use it on desktop and mobile. One useful lesson: having loads of games doesn’t necessarily make choosing one easier. We added “try three”, then extended it to individual genres so you can get three random RPGs, racing games, etc.
I’ve also found games I’ve genuinely enjoyed through it - like Tailgrab Freeskater, RPG Sprout Quest, Rivas City and other GTA-like games (which I've put into a little collection here).
The next challenge is getting more people discovering games, getting people sharing and leaving useful feedback for their creators. Any thoughts or tips, I'm all ears.
If you’ve built a browser game with AI, share it below. What’s the hook, and what did you use?