About HeapPlay

HeapPlay helps you quickly find a game that fits your mood, your interests, your device and the time you have. It also helps independent developers find players and improve their games through honest feedback.

How it works

Every game has one page, however many places it can be played. On that page each way to play is a separate launch option with its own button:

Play here: the game runs inside HeapPlay. These are HeapPlay's own games. They are free, need no registration and nothing to install.
Play on the developer's website, Open in store and Download: the button takes you to the official source named beside it. You leave HeapPlay, and that site's own terms apply: it may ask for an account, payment or installation, and may show advertising or sell things in the game. HeapPlay says what it knows about each of these on the page, and says “Not specified” when it doesn't know.

Adding someone else's game to HeapPlay means adding a page with official links. The game's files are not copied to HeapPlay.

Being made with AI is not a condition for being listed, and HeapPlay only mentions AI use where the developer has confirmed it, with the source.

Where the facts come from

Details on a game page come from the game's official source and from confirmed statements by its creator. An editor checks the official source, the developer or publisher, that the link really is that game, and each launch option that is claimed. What cannot be confirmed stays empty.

“Not specified” never means yes. A game with no stated age label is not presented as suitable for children; one with no stated price is not presented as free; an Android app does not show that a game works in a phone's browser. Filters only match facts that are known.

Age labels always name their source: the developer's own statement, the rating on the store page, or the HeapPlay editors' assessment of the playable build.

How ratings work

Anyone can rate a game from 1 to 5 without an account. Each browser has one rating per game, which can be changed or removed at any time. The limit is enforced on HeapPlay's server.

That makes a rating one per browser, not one per person, and it does not prove that the rater played the game. HeapPlay does not present ratings as verified votes.

Game pages and cards show the ordinary average and the number of ratings behind it. A game nobody has rated shows “Not rated yet”, never a made-up number.

The sort order “Top rated (weighs number of ratings)” uses an internal score so that one five-star rating doesn't outrank fifty: (5 × 3 + sum of ratings) ÷ (5 + number of ratings). That score is only used for ordering and is never shown as a game's rating.

To keep ratings from being stuffed, one network can send at most 40 ratings in 10 minutes, 6 new ratings for the same game per day, and ratings from 12 new browsers per day. Automated clients are not counted. These limits are starting values and can be adjusted, for example if they turn out to be too tight for schools or large households.

How “Popular now” works

Popularity uses only what happens on HeapPlay over the last 30 days: opening a game's page (weight 1), following a link to an official source (weight 2), a confirmed start of a game hosted here (weight 3) and a rating (weight 4). Each day's activity counts half as much for every 7 days that pass, and the list is recalculated every 10 minutes.

One visitor counts once per game, per kind of activity, per day; repeating the same thing the same day changes nothing. For games played elsewhere HeapPlay only knows that someone followed the link, not whether or how long they played. Store downloads and views on other sites are never mixed in.

Reviews

A review is some words about a game, optionally with a rating and screenshots. You can say how you played and which version; HeapPlay also notes what the browser reports about itself (computer or phone, system, browser) and shows the two separately.

A review belongs to the browser it was written in. After posting you get a private link that lets you change or delete it from anywhere. Neither is a verified identity, and HeapPlay cannot confirm that a reviewer played the game.

Because the audience includes children, screenshots always wait for a moderator, and so do reviews that contain links or contact details. Every review and every game page has a report link. Verified developers can reply publicly.

New and lesser-known games

Fresh finds lists games added in the last 45 days and games with fewer than 10 ratings, so that new projects are not buried under established ones.

Links and referrals

When a button leads to a developer's own website, HeapPlay adds utm_source=heapplay.com&utm_medium=referral to the address so the developer's analytics can see the visit came from here. The tag names HeapPlay, not you. It is not added to stores and other large platforms, to signed links, or to links in blog articles.

Links supplied by people who submit games are marked for search engines as user-supplied.

Four times a year (on the 10th of January, April, July and October) HeapPlay checks every outbound link. A link is switched off only when its site clearly says the page is gone, and only after a second check. A site that merely refuses automatic visits, asks for a login or times out is left alone.

HeapPlay's robot

When someone submits a link, and during link checks, HeapPlay requests the page with the user agent HeapPlayBot/1.0. It reads the page's title, description and share picture, requests each page rarely, and never signs in or fills in forms.

Who runs HeapPlay

HeapPlay is an independent project. Decisions on submissions, reports, removals, merges and developer access are made by its owner, a person, not by an automatic process. Reach the owner through the contact page.