How We Pick Games for TheMiniGames: Our Curation Checklist

When we started TheMiniGames in 2025, I had a loose rule: if I enjoyed a game for five minutes on my own phone, it was in. That rule lasted about three weeks. We now have a short, boring checklist, and it is the single reason the catalog is as small as it is. Here it is, in the order we actually run it.

1. Does it load in under two seconds on a mid-range phone?

Our target device is a three-year-old Android on a 4G connection. If the title screen does not appear within two seconds, the game does not go in. This sounds strict until you remember what minigames are for — a round between tasks, a commute, a minute in a queue. Four seconds of a loading spinner kills the pitch.

A lot of otherwise good HTML5 games fail here, usually because they ship with uncompressed audio or textures sized for desktop. We send the developer a note and a reference list of game formats to come back with — never a bundled list of fixes, because that veers into free consulting.

2. Does it play on touch without an "install our app" nag?

Browser games that promote a native app on first launch get rejected on the spot. Not because native apps are bad, but because the entire promise of this site is "no download, no install." A pop-up that undermines that promise within five seconds of landing is the fastest trust loss we can inflict on a visitor.

The second variant we reject: games that technically work on touch but were built for a mouse, so the hitboxes are too small for a thumb. If I can't play a round comfortably on a phone held in one hand, it is not a mini game.

3. Does the first round make sense without a tutorial screen?

Casual players will not read a tutorial. They will tap once, and if they haven't understood the loop by the third tap, they will leave. Block Blast and Bubble Pop are good examples — the goal is visible before any instruction has to be read. Games that need a wall of onboarding text go back to the developer with a suggestion to lead with a demo animation instead.

4. Is it safe for kids over the shoulder?

TheMiniGames is a general-audience site. That means every game needs to be something a parent could glance at and not care. No gratuitous violence, no cartoon suggestiveness, no gambling framing. Not because we are prudish, but because our audience includes a lot of people playing during a work break or a school break, and we don't want them hiding the tab.

This is the single most common rejection reason. A surprising number of good HTML5 games have a loot-box or spin-the-wheel screen baked in. We don't ship those.

5. Does it respect my battery and data?

We profile every game for CPU and network load during a one-minute play session. If a title pulls 30+ ad calls in a minute or runs the fan on a Macbook, it fails. The user is here because the browser is light. If we ship something that undoes that advantage, we have failed them.

What this adds up to

We have passed on more games than we have shipped. A small catalog you can trust is better than a huge catalog with a few landmines in it, which is also, I suspect, why most browser-game portals eventually get a bad reputation. Our hope is that if you open any game on TheMiniGames, you will not have to think twice about whether it was vetted.

If you develop HTML5 games and want to pitch us, the email on the about page is the right place to start. We reply to every submission within a few days — usually with yes, no, or "come back when X is fixed."