Games like Little Alchemy and Infinite Craft
Combining games are simple to like: you put two things together and get a third you didn’t expect, and your list of discoveries slowly fills up.
If you’re looking for games like Infinite Craft or games like Little Alchemy, here are five free browser games that scratch the same itch in different ways. All of them run in a tab. No download, no account. If you want an Infinite Craft alternative with an actual finish line, start with the first one.
1. Loomlight — combining, with a best answer
Loomlight is the closest thing here to a pure element combination game. Drag one thing onto another and they turn into a third: water and earth make mud, mud and sun make a seed, and 180 hand-drawn things open up from a starting four.
What makes it different from an endless one is that it has an end, and it was made by hand. Every thing in it was chosen and drawn on purpose, so you never end up staring at a nonsense phrase nobody meant. And because the list stops somewhere, there really is a best route to each thing — so the daily target is a proper puzzle with a score to beat.
You can also share your score without spoiling it for anyone, which most crafting games can’t do.
2. Bloomstead — crafting you can walk around in
Bloomstead takes the same gathering-and-making pleasure into three dimensions. Dig blocks, farm, build a home, watch day turn to night. It’s calm rather than tense. Nothing hunts you.
3. Stackpark — pure making, no rules
Stackpark drops the discovery and leaves the building: a sunny island, a box of toy parts that never runs out, and a character small enough to make everything you build feel huge. No goals, no timer.
4. Starskip — for the “one more go” part of your brain
If what you liked was the short loop and the daily target, Starskip gives you it in four-second goes: flick a star around planets into a ring, beat the target, come back tomorrow for a new course.
5. Butterslip — a different kind of puzzle entirely
Butterslip is a sliding puzzle with one rule: you slide until you hit something. Butter every pancake, serve the order in the fewest moves. Same work-out-the-order feeling, completely different angle.
What to look for in a combining game
A few things separate the ones you’ll still be playing next week.
- Was the list written by someone, or made up by a computer? Written lists stay sensible. Computer-made ones drift into nonsense the longer you play.
- Is there a goal? Endless discovery is lovely for an hour and aimless after that. A daily target gives you a reason to come back.
- Can you share it? And can you share it without handing over the answer?
- Does it need an account? It shouldn’t.