Back to 2000s: You can now play old-school games on your Kindle

If you thought your Kindle was only good for curling up with a novel, think again. Thanks to a clever web app called KindlePlay, you can now use your e-reader to play classic games, including the often-requested Sudoku, no jailbreaks, hacks, or sideloading required.

The discovery comes courtesy of Reddit user u/spaceuniversal, who shared the find on the r/kindle subreddit. Their post points readers to KindlePlay.com, a simple but surprisingly delightful website designed specifically for Kindle’s built-in web browser. The project is the work of Peter, the site’s developer, who built KindlePlay to run smoothly on e-ink screens, particularly the Kindle Oasis.

Visiting the site through your Kindle’s browser reveals four games: Sudoku, Hangman, Lost PIN, and Minesweeper. They are all clean, monochrome, and touch-friendly, and of course, pleasantly nostalgic. I tested the games on multiple Kindle models and found the experience smoothest on my Kindle Scribe because of the stylus.

Before you start playing, make sure JavaScript and images are enabled in your Kindle’s web settings. KindlePlay is not an app you download; it is a fully web-based experience that runs right in the browser. Once you are set up, you can dive into puzzles and logic games that feel perfectly at home on e-ink. It is a small thing, but it gives your Kindle’s often-forgotten web browser a real purpose.

Of course, this is not going to turn your Paperwhite into a PlayStation. E-ink displays refresh slowly, which means gameplay can feel a little laggy, and battery use might spike more than usual. But as far as low-stakes fun goes, it is a quirky addition to the Kindle experience. It is also a good reminder of what makes the Kindle community so enjoyable: creative developers and enthusiastic Redditors constantly finding new ways to do more with a device built for less.