Play Flight of the Amazon Queen online — free, instant Runs natively — no emulator
Flight of the Amazon Queen — the 1995 point-and-click adventure in which a pilot for hire flies a movie star into the Amazon and things go wrong more or less immediately. No download, no sign-up, nothing to install.
Its authors released it as freeware in 2004. This is that release, running in your browser through ScummVM.
Starting Flight of the Amazon Queen…
Downloading the ScummVM engine (about 12 MB) and the game (about 22 MB). This happens once — after the first visit it's cached and starts straight away.
Controls — what does what
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Walk and use | Left-click. Click the floor to go there, or a thing to use it. |
| Look at something | Right-click. |
| Save, load, options | Open the Journal in your inventory — that's the game's own menu. Ctrl+F5 opens ScummVM's as well. |
| Skip the intro | Esc — the logo screens and opening scene run for a minute or two first. |
| Skip a line of dialogue | Esc or click. |
This game is genuinely free. John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis released it as freeware in March 2004, through the ScummVM project — not abandonware, not a demo. The file served here matches the SHA-256 checksum ScummVM publishes for it, and the readme with the licence is served alongside the game, as that licence requires. More detail in our provenance notice.
What you're playing
You are Joe King, a pilot with a plane, no money and no judgement, hired to fly the actress Faye Russell into the Amazon for a photo shoot. The plane does not stay in the air, the jungle turns out to be crowded, and the plot works its way through a kidnapped princess, a tribe of Amazons, some unusually short giants and a lederhosen company with more going on than lederhosen.
It is a comedy adventure of the mid-nineties school — hand-drawn, cheerfully silly, and built out of talking to everyone and trying everything on everything. It was made in Australia by a very small team and published in 1995, when the genre was at its commercial peak and about to fall off it.
Two practical notes. The Journal in your inventory is the game's menu, which is not obvious if you're used to a menu bar. And this is the floppy release: no spoken dialogue, all text. The talkie version exists and is also free, but it's over 100 MB, which is a different kind of web page.
About that copyright screen
The game opens on a 1995 notice saying unauthorised copying is prohibited, naming Interactive Binary Illusions and Warner Interactive. That screen is part of the original retail game data and we haven't altered it.
It is not in conflict with what you're doing here. Interactive Binary Illusions was the authors' own studio — the same John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis who, in 2004, released the game as freeware through ScummVM with a written licence permitting free distribution. Warner Interactive was the publisher, not the owner. The 2004 licence is what governs this copy; the title screen simply predates it by nine years.
We mention it because you'll see it, and because a page that tells you a game is free should explain the thing on screen that appears to say otherwise.
How this works
ScummVM isn't an emulator. It reimplements the engines these games ran on, so instead of simulating a 1995 PC it runs the game logic directly. That's why it's quick, why it scales cleanly to a modern screen, and why it can run in a browser tab at full speed.
This page runs ScummVM itself, compiled to WebAssembly with the project's own Emscripten backend. The engine is GPL-3.0; the game data is the authors' freeware release. Nothing is uploaded and nothing needs installing.
Saves
Save from the Journal, or from ScummVM's menu on Ctrl+F5. Your saves are stored in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back to them — but they live on this device, in this browser, and won't follow you elsewhere. Everything you have saved across the site is listed on the saved games page.
Frequently asked questions
Is Flight of the Amazon Queen legal to play here?
Yes. Its authors, John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis, released it as freeware in March 2004 through the ScummVM project. The licence in the readme permits free distribution on any medium provided the readme and its copyright notices stay intact, which they do — the readme is served alongside the game. The file here matches the SHA-256 checksum ScummVM publishes for it.
The title screen says unauthorised copying is prohibited. What about that?
That notice is the original 1995 retail one, baked into the game data, and it names Interactive Binary Illusions and Warner Interactive. Interactive Binary Illusions was the authors' own studio, and it is those authors who released the game as freeware in 2004. The 2004 licence governs this copy; the screen predates it.
How do I save the game?
Use the Journal in your inventory — that's the game's own save, load and options menu. ScummVM's own menu on Ctrl+F5 works too. Either way the save is kept in this browser's storage.
Is this the talkie version with speech?
No, this is the floppy release: text, music and sound effects, no spoken dialogue. It's 22 MB rather than the talkie version's 100-plus, which is the difference between a game that starts in a browser tab and one that doesn't.
Does it work on a phone?
It runs, but it's a mouse game. A tap works as a left-click, which covers walking and using things, but the right-click Look verb is awkward on a touchscreen. A desktop, or a tablet with a trackpad, is a much better fit.
More you can play in your browser
- Beneath a Steel SkyRevolution's cyberpunk classic, with Dave Gibbons art.
- Lure of the TemptressRevolution's first game, and the Virtual Theatre engine.
- SołtysA Polish comedy adventure, freed by its publisher in 2011.
- MicropolisThe open-source SimCity, straight from Maxis' code.
- DOOMThe 1993 shareware episode, playable in your browser.
- All games & appsBrowse everything you can play or run here.