Hard Games Online: 8 Free Games That Will Test Your Patience
Some games are hard because they are fast. Some are hard because they are unfair on purpose. Some are hard because they ask you to think in a way you are not used to. The best hard games are all three, and they still make you press "try again" immediately.
Here are eight free browser games that are hard in different ways, with a tip for each. No download, and they all work on a phone.
1. Troll Level: hard because it lies
Troll Level looks like the easiest platformer you have ever seen. Then the floor drops out. The exit door runs away when you approach it. The spikes jump. The friendly sign points the wrong way. Every level is one short joke, and the joke is on you.
How to beat it: expect every object to be a trap, and move slowly through new screens. Each failed try comes back as a ghost that replays your run next to you, so you can see exactly where the trap triggered. Use the ghosts.
2. Needle Panic: hard because of the odds
One needle. Five million pieces of hay. You start digging with your hands, and that is about as hopeless as it sounds. Upgrades bring pitchforks, magnets and finally a combine harvester.
How to beat it: spend everything on upgrades early. Digging by hand longer than you need to is the most common mistake.
3. Meme Brain: hard because you think wrong
Forty-five riddles where the answer is never where you look. You might have to drag the sun across the sky, tap the question itself, or like a comment instead of choosing an answer.
How to beat it: when a level seems impossible, stop reading it as a quiz. Everything on screen might be touchable, including the text. Our riddles with answers explain the three tricks almost every riddle uses, and they apply here too.
4. Game from the Ads: hard because it is a real version of a fake game
You know those ads for puzzle games where someone pulls the wrong pin and lava pours onto the hero, and the screen says "99% FAIL"? This game has 60 of those levels, and they actually play. Pull the pin, pick a road through number gates, follow tangled ropes, find the key. Water turns lava into stone, lava melts gold into coal, and the cat needs to survive all of it.
How to beat it: before you pull anything, trace what will fall where. Every level opens with a caption like ONLY GENIUSES or 5 SECONDS, and the caption is the real rule. The ad hand shows the move most players make, and it is usually the wrong one.
5. Purrfect Swing: hard because of timing
Hold to grab a hook with a rainbow rope, let go to fly. Every hook is a note of the level's song. Skip one and that note is gone, and at the goal the game plays back your version of the tune, gaps and all. A Purrfect run means catching every single note. Forty-five levels, with zappers, moving hooks and low gravity on the moon.
How to beat it: let go a little earlier than feels right. The swing carries you further than you expect, and most missed notes come from holding on too long.
6. Uphill Paws: hard because of physics
A cat drives a car up endless hills. Too much gas and the car flips backward. Too little and you roll back down. Run out of fuel and the drive ends.
How to beat it: feather the gas on steep climbs and lean forward in the air. Upgrades to fuel and engine matter more than looks.
7. Beat Hop Cat on HYPE: hard because of speed
Beat Hop Cat is a rhythm game where a cat hops from tile to tile on the beat. On the CHILL lane it is relaxing. On the HYPE remix lane the tiles come fast enough to make your thumb cramp.
How to beat it: listen instead of watching. The tiles follow the beat, so hearing the next one is faster than seeing it.
8. Purrzzle: hard because there is only one answer
A daily logic puzzle: one cat on every row, column and rug, and no two cats may touch, even diagonally. There is exactly one solution and no guessing, and the 100 practice boards go from Kitten to Expert. The Expert boards take real deduction.
How to beat it: start with the smallest rug. If a rug has only two cells, one of them must hold a cat, and that rules out a lot of the board. More tips are in our guide to logic puzzles for adults.
What makes a hard game good instead of annoying
A hard game is fun when you can see why you failed. Troll Level shows you a ghost of your run. Purrfect Swing lets you hear exactly which note you missed. Meme Brain makes you laugh when you finally see the answer. You lose, you understand, and you want to try again right away.
A hard game is annoying when failure feels random or when each try takes too long to restart. That is why most of the games above restart in a second: the shorter the gap between a fail and the next try, the more "one more go" you get out of a player.
Tips for any hard game
- Take a break after five fails in a row. Your hands get tense and your timing gets worse. Two minutes away is often enough to get through.
- Change one thing per try. Jump a little later, or go left instead of right. Changing everything at once teaches you nothing.
- Watch someone else play. A friend often spots the trick that you have been running past.
All our hardest games are on the hard games page.