How to play Unity Games offline

When you play games in your web browser, one of the following four technologies is being used usually: Adobe Flash, Java, Unity or HMTL5.

There are exceptions to the rule but the majority relies on at least one of the technologies listed above. When it comes to Unity, it is necessary to install the Unity Web Player add-on on the system which web browsers pick up as a plugin.

The Unity team works on a plugin-less version of the player currently so expect this to come out in the near future. The advantage of it is that it does not require plugins to run which should improve stability among other things.

While it is possible to play Unity games in the browser directly, you may have noticed that performance may not be the best. This is usually because you are playing the game on older hardware but partially also caused by it not being a native app but running inside the browser.

This means usually that you get other elements on the screen not related to the game. A website may display ads for example, media, textual contents, images and other elements which at the very least may be distracting.

Play Unity games offline

It is possible to play Unity games offline, or separated from the website they are hosted on. Offline is of course only an option if the game is not purely multi-player.

Good news is that you can download many Unity games and play them on the computer regardless of an Internet connection. Another benefit is that it is usually faster than playing the games in the browser.

Here is what needs to be done:

1. You need to install the Unity Web Player plugin on your system. It is available for Mac and Windows.
2. Download the latest version of Unity Player from this website. It is available for Windows and the tool used to play the Unity games on the computer.
3. Optional: Install a cache browser for easier access to Unity Player files. Firefox users can check out CacheViewer

All steps above are one-time processes. To download and play a Unity game offline, do the following:

1. Open the game in your browser of choice. This downloads it to the cache of the browser.
2. Use a caching extension or browse your browser's cache manually to locate the .unity3d file in the cache.
3. Drag and drop the file into the Unity Player interface.