PopIdle

PopIdle is a daily browser game about album artwork. Its puzzles are numbered from 22 May 2022, one per day, and every player gets the same album. The albums come from a bank of about 1,650 records reaching from the 1950s to the 2020s, with the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s best represented. There is nothing to listen to: the only clue is the cover itself, reduced at first to a handful of large coloured squares.

You start typing an artist or album title and pick an entry from the search list. If the artist is right but the album is not, the guess is marked as close. If it is wrong, the cover comes back a little less pixelated, so shapes, faces and lettering begin to show. You have six attempts in all. When you solve it, or run out, you see the full cover and get a result to share. The game keeps your statistics and streaks in the browser, and the previous puzzles page lets you play any day you missed.

Under Even more PopIdle, the site links three decade versions, PopIdle80s, PopIdle90s and PopIdle00s, each with a daily album from that decade, and ScreenIdle, which does the same thing with film posters. It also points players to Bandle.

Most daily music games test your ears. PopIdle tests whether you remember what records look like, so it suits people who grew up browsing record shops or scrolling album art, and it takes a minute or two.