About the arcade

A better kind of quick break.

Five Minute Arcade is an independent game project built around one simple promise: a complete play session that fits into five minutes.

Why five minutes?

Most games ask for more time than people planned to give them. Here, the session itself is the game: one clock and one Run Score follow you across a six-game lineup selected from a larger library. A Five-Minute Run ends cleanly with a recap and a chance to beat your locally saved personal best when the next run unlocks.

Daily and casual play

Every visitor gets a free Five-Minute Run every three hours on the same browser. Opening a game lets you look around without using the run: the 5:00 clock and three-hour cooldown begin only when you make your first gameplay move. The Daily Challenge is not a separate run; it is an optional once-per-local-day way to choose a seeded starting game for that same Five-Minute Run, and its attempt is also recorded on the first gameplay action. The six-game lineup refreshes every three hours for new runs. Once a run has started, that lineup is locked for the session and you can switch freely between those six while the same clock and Run Score continue. Normal runs unlock three hours after that first gameplay action; the Daily Challenge changes when the player’s browser or device enters a new local calendar day at midnight. Rewarded adverts may offer an optional extra unranked run once connected.

Built carefully

The arcade currently saves progress, streaks and a Run Score personal best only on the player’s device when they allow it. Local scores are unverified. There are no player accounts or active advertisements. We use lightweight first-party analytics to understand aggregate visits, gameplay activity and the source of links we share; this does not create a persistent player profile. Future advertising will be placed between sessions, never over active gameplay.