About Candy Arcade

What Candy Arcade is

Candy Arcade is a browser gaming destination built around one narrow subject: candy-themed arcade games. Everything on the site is either a game you can play immediately in your browser, or writing about how those games and the genre around them work. There are thirty games at launch, organised into six categories, and an editorial library of guides that explains the mechanics those games are built from.

The site is static HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript. There is no account system, no login, no download and no payment. Games run on the HTML5 canvas and save your scores in your own browser. That is the whole architecture, and it is deliberate: a site with no backend has very little it can do wrong with your data.

Why the site exists

Free browser games are easy to find and mostly badly documented. A typical game page tells you the title, shows a play button, and leaves you to work out the rules by dying repeatedly. We thought there was room for a site that treats its own games as subjects worth explaining - one where the page tells you what the combo rule actually is, when the difficulty steps up, and which power-up is a trap.

The second reason is originality. A large share of candy-themed browser games are visual imitations of one very famous match-three game. We wanted to find out what the theme supports when you build original mechanics around it instead, which is why the library includes a thrust game, a maze game, a cannon puzzle and a game about momentum on a hill, all sharing one visual language.

What games are available

Thirty original HTML5 games across six categories: candy platformers, endless candy games, candy collection games, candy obstacle games, candy rush games, and reflex and candy arcade games. Difficulty ranges from Easy through to Expert, and the library deliberately includes games at both ends rather than clustering in the middle.

Every game shares one engine. That is why the combo rules, power-ups, collectible values and control conventions are consistent across the library: a shield means the same thing in every game, sugar crystals are always the highest-value collectible, and value always correlates with exposure. Where a game breaks one of those conventions, its own page says so.

How the games are made

Everything is built with HTML5 Canvas and vanilla JavaScript. There is no game engine, no framework and no build-time asset pipeline for artwork, because all the artwork is drawn on the canvas at runtime from code. Characters, collectibles, environments, creatures and machinery are all procedural shapes, which is why the games scale cleanly to any screen size and why the whole site is small enough to load quickly on a phone connection.

Sound is synthesised at runtime with the Web Audio API. There are no audio files on the site at all. That was originally a licensing decision - synthesised tones cannot be someone else's copyright - and turned out to be a performance decision as well.

All thirty games are original in mechanics, artwork and naming. We do not copy, reskin or imitate existing commercial games, characters or interfaces. Where a game uses a mechanic with a long public history, such as a growing tail or a ballistic arc, its page says so plainly rather than implying we invented it.

How the games are tested

Every game is played to completion or to a genuine failure state before publication, on desktop Chrome, Firefox and Edge, and on at least one iOS and one Android device. The checks are specific rather than vague: does the game start, do controls respond, does collision register, does the score increase, does the combo behave as the page describes, does pause work, does restart clear the previous run's state, and is the high score still there after a reload.

Touch controls are tested with a thumb rather than a mouse emulating touch, because the two are not the same test. The most common problem we find is a control that works but sits where a hand covers something important, which only shows up when a real hand is holding a real phone.

• Does it load and start without console errors?
• Do keyboard, mouse and touch controls all work?
• Does collision detection register reliably at maximum speed?
• Does the score, candy count and combo behave as the game page documents?
• Do pause, restart and the sound toggle all work?
• Is the local high score still there after closing and reopening the page?
• Is the game playable with a keyboard alone?
• Does it respect the reduced-motion preference?

How the editorial content is produced

Guides are written by the same person who builds the games, which has one clear advantage and one clear risk. The advantage is that when an article says a combo tier drops by one on a miss, that is read from the implementation rather than guessed. The risk is that it is easy to describe what you intended rather than what you shipped, so articles about our own mechanics are checked against the running game rather than against the design notes.

For articles about general technical subjects - how the canvas element works, how browsers handle touch events, what the reduced-motion media query does - we cite primary documentation rather than other articles. Our full approach is set out in the editorial policy and the fact-checking policy.

Accessibility

Every game on Candy Arcade is playable with a keyboard. Every game's instructions exist as real HTML outside the canvas, so a screen reader can reach them - a canvas is opaque to assistive technology, and putting the rules inside it would make them unavailable. Every animation respects the operating system's reduced-motion preference, and there is a manual toggle on every game page for people whose system setting does not reflect what they want right now.

Three of the thirty games are playable with a single input, which makes them usable one-handed or with a single switch. We treat that as a feature of the library rather than a special case, and the reflex category page says which games qualify.

Originality and what we will not do

• We do not use copyrighted characters, logos, sprites, music or sound effects.
• We do not copy game descriptions, screenshots or interfaces from other sites.
• We do not publish fabricated statistics, studies, quotes, reviews or player counts.
• We do not claim global leaderboards or rankings, because we do not have a server to hold them.
• We do not make health, nutrition or medical claims. Our candy is a fictional in-game collectible.
• We do not use fake play buttons, fake download buttons, misleading countdowns or ad-click prompts.

Privacy in one paragraph

Candy Arcade stores your scores, favourites, play history and sound and motion preferences in your own browser's local storage. That data never leaves your device and we cannot read it. There is no account, no email capture and no tracking script running on this site as published. The privacy policy explains this in full, including what would change if advertising were added later.

Getting in touch

The contact page explains exactly how to reach us and what happens when you do. Corrections are welcome and taken seriously: if something on this site is wrong, telling us is the fastest way to get it fixed.