I'm sure this is an elementary question -- but how do I download games to my computer so I can save them? I can't see any option other than "Play online". Do I need an App or something -- and if so, where can I find it?

On Quest games, you should have a download link below the author's profile picture in the right sidebar.

For HTML games on this site, the link might not appear.

I should add that I have had some problems with this recently, I'm not sure why. Clicking the download link doesn't do anything, but right-click and select "open in new tab" works fine.

I have yet to figure out why this is happening.

Thank you, mrangel: I've got a bit further! I tried your "open in new tab", and got a file downloaded onto my computer, but when I tried to open it I got a message saying "what program do you want to use" (or something like that -- I can't get the message again now). I tried using "word" from the list, but it was rejected, and now whenever I try anything else I get sent back to word and its rejection message. Any ideas? (as you can guess, I'm a real beginner with technology).

when I tried to open it I got a message saying "what program do you want to use" (or something like that

If it's a Quest file; you need to to install Quest.

Thank you so much for your patience, mrangel. I'm nearly there. I've downloaded a game (The Shack) and begun to play it, but when I try to save it nothing happens. After a bit of experimenting I got a "Save As" screen which required a file name -- I tried "TheShack.QUEST-SAVE" and "TheShack.quest.QUEST.SAVE but they weren't accepted. Please could I have your advice one more time?

I'm not familiar with the Quest desktop player, but it seems odd that it would refuse to save. That said, I would strongly suggest that you don't change the file extension (the part after the dot). Almost every application gives you a default filename when prompting to save, and you will usually get the best results by leaving the part after the dot as it is.

If this doesn't apply to Quest, I'd be very surprised that I've not seen the question before.

Does it give you any kind of message to tell you what's wrong?

No, no message: just the "save as" screen. It opens a folder called "downloaded games". There are no items in the folder, the "filename" box is empty, the "save as type" box says "saved games", and when I press "save" nothing happens. I guess I'll just have to keep experimenting -- maybe erase everything and start again. Anyway, thank you very much for your advice: it helped me get a long way further than I had on my own.

Just enter TheShack in the filename field and press save. Quest should save a file named TheShack.quest-save then. This file can be loaded by Quest later

Bingo! Got it. Everything seems to be working OK now. Thank you both very much, Pertex and mrangel, for your help.