Swiff wants to be your one-stop shop for old-school web games

If you miss the good ol’ days of browser gaming, or if you’re simply an avid Android Authority reader, there’s a very good chance you’ve already run into Swiff. The Android app, which was released early in July, brought back an easy way to play thousands of classic Flash games on the go. The app is now getting a major update that makes it more than just a simple Flash game player.

Swiff version 1.3.0 is out now, and it is a significant update that can bolster the app’s already-vast game library. Not only does it unlock the original Adobe Flash Player, but it finally brings support for J2ME and Scratch games.

For reference, before the v.1.3.0 update, Swiff ran Flash games via the Ruffle engine. The engine essentially recreates the Flash runtime without using the actual Flash Player. However, there are some Flash games that don’t work properly with Ruffle.

Newer emulation tech like FEX can bridge this gap, and that’s what changes introduced in v.1.3.0 achieve. The original Adobe Flash Player now runs alongside the existing players as a backup option for games that don’t properly work with Ruffle.

J2ME and Scratch games

The bigger story with v.1.3.0 is that Swiff is starting to move beyond Flash altogether. The update adds support for Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) and Scratch games.

Support for the former should bring primarily mobile games into Swiff, including familiar feature phone classics like Snake, Bounce, Asphalt Urban GT, Bejeweled, and more.

Scratch, on the other hand, is a comparatively recent addition to the lightweight gaming landscape. The 2007-launched platform has become popular for modern user-created games for the web.

If you find a Scratch game that you want to play on your Android device, you simply copy its URL and paste it into the now “Import URL” option in the Library.

Everything else

The new V.1.3.0 also introduces better tools to organize your games. There are playlists, which let you group games however you like, complete with a “Liked games” playlist that collects all your favorite games.

Web shortcuts, on the other hand, let you launch web games that cannot be added directly to Swiff.

The update includes plenty of smaller features, quality-of-life changes, and bug fixes, including customizable on-screen controls, better storage management, an ad-blocking option, and more. Find out everything else that’s new in the v1.3.0 changelog on Swiff’s GitHub page.