A little more
play in your day.

PlayBurst is one free app with 48 games in it: 19 card games, 9 word games, 6 puzzle games, 5 arcade games, 5 board games, 4 classics. One download rather than 48 of them, every game free, and no purchase unlocks one. It is coming first to the Amazon Appstore for Fire tablets, then to Google Play and the App Store.

48. The full list is on the games page, grouped into 6 categories: 19 card games, 9 word games, 6 puzzle games, 5 arcade games, 5 board games, 4 classics.

No. PlayBurst signs you in as a guest the first time you open it, and you can play every one of the 48 games without giving an email address or creating a password. There is a Sign in button on the Profile tab, and it is optional: the only way in is Google, and what an account gives you is a friends list, progress that follows you to a second device, and the ability to buy something in the shop, because a purchase belongs to an account rather than to a device. Sign in and Google passes us your name and your email address, and that is all we keep of it. Stay a guest and we never see either.

Yes. All 48 games are free and there is nothing to unlock. The shop sells coins and removing the ads, and that is the whole of it: no game sits behind a purchase, and nothing you buy gives you a game somebody else does not have.

Your first 3 hints each day are free, shared across games that offer hints. The allowance resets at 00:00 UTC. After that, an extra hint costs 100 coins, or you can choose an optional rewarded video where available. The button and offer show the allowance or cost before use. A connection is needed to check and claim hints. Undo, instructions and Hangman's fixed clue remain free.

An active ad-free pass removes automatic ads and optional video offers. Hints and continues keep their regular coin prices. When your balance is below the price, the use is included with your pass and no coins are deducted. The offer says this before you use it, and the benefit lasts while the pass is active.

Mostly. The games run on your device rather than on a server, so playing needs no connection at all. The first launch reaches out once to set up the guest account your scores live in; if it cannot, the app opens anyway and picks the account up when you are next online. Hints, coin purchases, leaderboards and daily rewards do need a connection.

15 computer opponents with names, faces and habits, and the game says so on screen. Karen would like to speak to the dealer, Nora waits for your mistake, and Gus has forty years of Tuesday night cards behind him. Two-player board games are played against the computer, or by passing the tablet between two people.

No chat, and no live play. Every game can be played on its own, against the device or against whoever is sitting next to you. Checkers, Chess and Reversi can also be played as a turn-based match against somebody already on your friends list: one move at a time, through our servers, with no clock running between moves and no matchmaking, so nothing ever puts you in a game with a stranger. There is a friends screen, which shows the people on your list, the requests waiting on somebody, and the accounts you have blocked, and there is nothing anywhere in PlayBurst that lets one player send another a message. Adding somebody needs an account you can sign back into, so it needs the optional Google sign-in on the Profile tab; a guest can open the screen but not add anyone. Every friend and every incoming request can be blocked or reported from the row it appears on.

PlayBurst is a general audience app rather than a children’s one, and it is not listed in any children’s store category, but it applies children’s privacy protections to every player by default rather than only to players who identify as children. Those two things sound like they disagree and they do not: treating everybody protectively is what lets us avoid putting an age gate in front of the games at all. In practice it means contextual advertising for everyone who has not told the app they are 13 or over, ad content limited to a G rating for everybody, no account required to play, and no way for one player to send another a message. The only text one player types that another can read is a display name, and our servers decide what one may be before accepting it. There is an optional Google sign-in on the Profile tab, needed for a friends list and for buying anything; a player who never uses it never gives PlayBurst a name or an email address. The app asks for a year of birth in one place, the friends screen, on the press that would put two players in touch. It is answered once, kept on your device and on the account it belongs to, and it cannot be retyped. Answer under 13 and the friends screen turns off, with every game, coin, streak, score and achievement untouched.

Yes. 38 of the 48 pick an unfinished game back up where you left it, and your scores, coins, streak and achievements are kept, on the device and backed up to the account they were earned on. As a guest that account lives on the one device. Signing in with Google, which is optional and on the Profile tab, moves it all to an account instead, so a second tablet signed in to the same Google account picks it up.

Nowhere yet. PlayBurst is not published on any store at the time of writing. The Amazon Appstore is the first destination, because the app is built and profiled for Amazon Fire tablets, and Google Play follows it, because Fire OS is Android and that is the same build. The App Store is after that. This site will carry the links the day they exist, and anything claiming to be PlayBurst before then is not ours.