I found out that you can play CoG games on kindle e-readers new web browser - it's e-ink time!

General
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I recently discovered that near the end of last year Amazon released an update (v5.16.4) on its e-readers (Kindle, Paperwhite, Oasis, Scribe) and they completely revamped the built-in web browser. I know, it sounds incredible, but now it works quite well.

The most pleasant surprise was that I was able to login into my CoG account on their website and now I can play my library on my e-reader web browser! It’s simply beautiful to read these games on e-ink. I have played three titles (400k+ words) so far, and everyhting worked perfectly.

However, I believe there are a couple of caveats: first, the web browser warns you that it is simple and that it doesn’t have much cache. Since, as far as I know, the games you play while on a browser store their progression in the cache, I think you should clear it every two-three games you play, so you won’t lose any progress (you’ll have to login to CoG website again though, but if you save it among your bookmarks that’s no issue and it’s fast). I’ve seen that a game stores about 9 MB of cache, so not much (please correct me if I’m wrong).

Second, I read simultaneously both a normal ebook and a CoG game, but I never turned off the wifi or navigated the web. I only opened the browser to play my game and then closed the browser before locking my e-reader, every single time.
Now, I think it should be useful to try all possible kindle-based scenarios and to check if some of them cause progress lost (I still had not try to turn on/off wifi between sessions, to lock the kindle without exiting the browser, to surf other pages and return to the CoG website later, and so on and so forth).

Finally, I suggest to switch to the white background from the default sepia one, so that you have an homogenous color (the kindle’s one). It’s prettier this way!

Let me know if it works well for you too, and if you encountered any issues, so that we know what we should and shouldn’t do with our kindle’s web browser!

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Games play on my old Paperwhite, 10th generation, but I’m not so sure if the 9th generation would work. Its a lot of hard work setting up the details to log-in, the 10th generation kindle is S.L.O.W! I suspect its easier simply using a cell phone or your computer but there could be times it would come in handy.

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Well, the point of using an e-reader instead of the cell phone or computer is that you don’t get eye-strain after reading for a long time! I think this is a nice (if the only one) “workaround” to play these games on a e-ink screen if you don’t have an e-ink tablet with android.

Yes, reaching the login page from the website’s home can be a bit slow, but once you’ve bookmarked your profile page, things are quite smooth. Probably, using the browser lateral slide bar can help you scrolling easier and giving you a better experience navigating the pages. I had no problems playing with my e-reader (Oasis, 10th generation too) that way, but even swiping worked extremely fine (and to be honest I prefer it over the slide bar).

Unfortunately Kindles are not designed for this, but I was happy to find out that things can work pretty well nonetheless. Thank you for your opinion!

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Wow this sent me on a whole research journey! Turns out there used to be a way to play CoG games on paperwhites using “active content” files purchasable in the Kindle store, but that was discontinued. There are still some old (presumably all unavailable) active content CoG games in the Kindle store and some vestigial active content folders on Paperwhite devices, but there just isn’t support for it.
I guess someone could specifically make third-party choicescript games for Paperwhites. But besides that, this browser update seems like the only viable option we’ve had for many years! This is an exciting discovery, Gravitron.

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I’m not sure, but wouldn’t the Kindle battery last longer than a phone? Its basically made for similar usage as a cog game, and the print size can be made larger for those who need it. Its definitely time to experiment with this and see where it leads. Has anyone tried it on text games on some of the other web sites, dashingdon for example?

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I didn’t know of that, thanks for sharing!
One a side note, I read that the Kindle Scribe supports interactive PDFs, and there are lots of templates and files out there. That’s great for planners, to navigate large files and so on, but I don’t think it’d be a solution for this type of games. However, in other ereaders, like Kobo, there’s still active content support.

Anyway, to be honest I never felt the need of active content on my kindle (in the Scribe it makes more sense, I guess, since you can use it for writing and so on), but the ability to access my CoG library on the browser is a welcome feature.

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Oh yeah the battery use is much lower with e-ink devices, even if you have a built-in nightlight that illuminates the screen. It also lasts for a super long time on standby mode, since it isn’t really doing anything in the background.

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Update: after experimenting a bit, I’ve seen that you can turn on/off wifi, read books, surf internet and you don’t lose progress, it’s kept stored in the browser’s cache. You just have to return to the game’s page and you can start again from where you left (it’s handy to save it in the bookmarks for quick access).
I still think it’s reasonable to clear the cache now and then to not lose the progress mid-game because the cache gets filled (since I think it must not be very large).

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I’m not sure if this is going to be a problem or not for those who have purchased games through Amazon, but I have just bought a new Paperwhite and some of my kindle books purchased in the last 5 years are no longer able to be downloaded as the format is too old!

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I think they stopped supporting interactive kindle ebooks some years ago, so that’s unfortunate. If I’m not wrong, now the only device which supports interactive formats (only interactive pdfs I’m sure of, don’t know if there are others), is the kindle Scribe

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Amazon Australia is relatively new still and we don’t have access to CoG games like Amazon US. At least I presume you can get the CoG games still as Amazon appears as an option in the drop down menu if I go to buy a download on here. I am happily playing games on my Paperwhite and I suspect if I am patient enough I might even get a few games from other sites that host IF. It beats squinting at my cell phone hands down!

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Sorry for the late reply. I believe that CoG games are available through Amazon only in the USA. However, there’s no native support to play them on Kindle’s devices. As I mentioned before, once they published some titles through the Kindle platform, but today they’re no longer supported. The only way to play those games on Kindle devices is through the browser web. The only alternative is to buy an android eink device, then you can do pretty much what you want!

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