Chromebooks issued by schools are built to a price. Four gigabytes of memory, an integrated graphics chip, and a processor chosen for battery life. That is completely fine for most browser games and completely inadequate for a few.
What runs fine
- Puzzle, card and board games. These are usually plain HTML and JavaScript and barely touch the graphics chip.
- 2D canvas games — platformers, shooters, physics toys. A canvas game drawing sprites is cheap.
- Text and turn-based games, which use almost nothing.
- Most io-style multiplayer games, which are 2D and designed for weak hardware because that is what their audience has.
What struggles
- WebGL 3D games — driving games, first-person shooters, anything with lighting and shadows.
- Unity WebGL builds, which are large, memory-hungry and slow to start even on good hardware.
- Emulated console and DOS games, which are keyboard-driven and often assume a real machine.
- Anything with a long loading bar. That bar is usually a multi-megabyte asset bundle being decompressed into memory you do not have.
How to tell in five seconds
If a game shows a black rectangle, a stuck loading bar, or a message about your browser not being supported, it wanted hardware acceleration and did not get it. That is not a broken game. It is a game that does not suit the device.
We hit this constantly when testing. A game that renders perfectly on a laptop shows a browser not supported fallback in an environment without proper graphics support, and the two are indistinguishable unless you know to look.
A black screen is usually a graphics problem, not a broken link.
A note on memory
The most common cause of a Chromebook stuttering is not the game. It is thirty other tabs. Browser games run in the same memory as everything else you have open, and a 3D game will happily ask for a gigabyte. Closing tabs fixes more performance complaints than anything else.
Games that run well on modest hardware
These are 2D or lightweight games from our catalogue — no heavy 3D pipeline, no multi-megabyte asset bundle to decompress before anything appears.
Tetris
About as light as a game gets. Runs on anything with a browser.
Pacman
2D sprites and simple logic. No graphics acceleration required.
Paku Paku
Very small download and minimal rendering, so it starts quickly on a slow connection.
Flip Bros
Light 2D physics. Popular here and undemanding.
Swingo
Simple 2D rendering with one input. Nothing here will trouble an integrated graphics chip.
Gunblood
A reaction game built around timing rather than rendering.
Perfect Slice
Single-action game with modest visuals and a fast start.
Draw Climber
Simple shapes and physics rather than a 3D scene.
How to tell a heavy game before you load it
- A long progress bar before anything appears usually means a large asset bundle, not a large game.
- Anything described as 3D, first-person or driving will want hardware acceleration.
- Emulated console and DOS titles assume a real keyboard and a real machine.
- A game that names an engine in its loading screen is generally shipping that engine to you first.