House rules: time, money, age and falling over

Rule 1: set the stop time before you start

5 of the 6 games end a run by themselves, most of them within a minute, and Super Fowlst can run on far longer. That is the trap, because a new run is one key away. QWOP restarts on Space, Breakoid needs a single click, and Retro Highway drops you back on the road after the result screen.

Use the 5:00 clock in the header of this site, a kitchen timer or the alarm on your phone.

Rule 2: know where money and adverts can appear

On the screens we opened on 10 November 2026 nothing was sold for money. Retro Highway prices bikes and upgrades in coins picked up on the road. Its iPhone app is another matter: the UK App Store lists purchases from £2.99 to £14.99.

Adverts are the real price of 5 of the 6. A Poki page has 2 advert places, the CrazyGames page had 3, and 2 games offer a deal: watch a video and get a repair, coins or a second chance. Retro Highway has 3 kinds of such button and Pinball Mania has 2. Nobody has to press them. Each fail screen also has a plain way on: SKIP in one game, Try Again in the other.

None of the 6 sells paid random items such as loot boxes or prize wheels. That matters under the PEGI rules of 2026: new games with paid random items are rated 16 from June 2026, and the same applies to digital games already on sale from 6 October 2026.

Rule 3: read the age rule of the host

On the portals the 6 games carry no age rule of their own; the host sets it. Poki's rules, as served to our address outside the UK, describe the site as "dedicated to website visitors of 16 years and older". The same page says the figure depends on location, and we did not read the UK version. CrazyGames' terms bar users under 13. Both portals run a separate site for children.

A store rating is a different thing. The console editions of Retro Highway are rated PEGI 3, yet the site that hosts its browser copy asks for 16. What we can say from the screens: all 6 games are played alone or by 2 people on 1 keyboard, and none has chat.

Rule 4: expect to fall over

3 of these games are built on failing fast. Retro Highway ended our runs after 5 to 20 seconds, Breakoid allows 1 ball per attempt, and QWOP usually ends within seconds with the sprinter on his back.

Bennett Foddy left the leaderboard out of QWOP for that reason. He found that "people like to set their own goals": some feel like winners after 5 metres. If a child, or an adult, is getting angry at any of the three, 5 metres is a fine place to stop.

Where UK parents can read more

• internetmatters.org has step-by-step guides to parental controls on browsers, phones and consoles.
• askaboutgames.com explains PEGI ratings and family settings for games in the UK.
• pegi.info lets you search the PEGI rating of a boxed or store game. The pages of the 6 browser games here carry no PEGI badge.