In Chrome it requires flash to play the sound (same as the plugin version). Everything else works fine without flash.

Why doesn't it just not play any sounds, then, instead of refusing to start the game? (FF4, no flash)

Given HTML5 Audio it makes you wonder whether a Flash requirement isn't partially a FU to Apple.

HTML5 audio sucks right now. It's a known problem (that might even be fixed in Chrome 13), but yeah, it's not ideal at all for the moment.

Further reading: http://www.phoboslab.org/log/2011/03/the-state-of-html5-audi...

<audio> isn't meant for short, repetitive clips (which is what games do). There's a new API being built for this need, can't remember the name of it right now.

Firefox has the Audio Data API, Chrome has the Web Audio API.

That's a rather absurd theory, considering that making the free online version work well on iOS would reduce Apple's income from a very, very popular iOS game.