About this shelf

Rulebook Shelf is a small, independent guide to free strategy games you can open in a browser. It started from a habit: before playing a board game, someone reads the rules aloud. Online games rarely get that treatment. You land in a match and find out about the ads and the paywall by running into them.

So each game here is described the way a rules sheet would do it. Goal first. Then the first move. Then the things a rules sheet would never say, but a friend would: how many ads there are, and whether you need an account. Then what the game asks you to buy.

We don't run the games. We don't host them, and the links on the cards go to each game's own site. If a link stops working we'd rather remove the card than point you somewhere else.

There are no scores and no ratings. Rankings are absent too. There are no player counts, because we can't verify them. There's no team page either: the site is run by its owner and answers to the email address on the contact page.

Some links may pay a commission if you open an account or buy on the game's site. It doesn't change which games get a card, and it doesn't change what a card says.