A free arena shooter you play online with friends. Rocket jumps, railguns and strafe jumping on 29 OpenArena levels, with video chat — nothing to download.
Fast movement, big guns, pickups on the floor and a frag limit to race to. Blast Arena is the arena shooter you played at a LAN party, rebuilt to run in a browser tab — and put in a room with the people you actually want to shoot.
Run speed, jump height, gravity, friction and air control are tuned to Quake III Arena's own numbers. Strafe jumping builds speed, rockets launch you up ledges, and jump pads and teleporters are where the level says they are.
No client, no game files, no server to rent. The arena loads in the browser on a laptop or a phone, and your friends join from a link without making an account.
Turn your camera on and your player's head wears it, so the rocket coming round the corner has a face behind it. Voice chat runs the whole match, trash talk included.
Gauntlet, Machinegun, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Lightning Gun, a scoped Railgun and the Plasma Gun. Everything is picked up off the map, and none of it reloads.
The Longest Yard floating in space, The Camping Grounds, The Dark Zone, Floating Spire and 25 more, all from OpenArena. Leave the arena on rotate and the room plays them in turn.
One switch in the lobby and everyone spawns with a railgun that kills in one hit, and the map is swept clean of pickups. Pure aim, nothing else.
Deathmatch, every player for themselves.
Up to eight players take a seat. Pick the level and the limits in the lobby, and the moment a second player sits down the match begins by itself: a short countdown, then everybody spawns at once. On your own, press Start and you're straight in — walk the level, learn where the rocket launcher is, and the next person to sit down begins a fresh match.
A kill is a frag. The match ends when somebody reaches the frag limit — 20 unless you change it — or when the clock runs out, 10 minutes by default. Most frags wins; a tie goes to whoever died less. Die and three seconds later you're back somewhere else on the level with a machinegun and the gauntlet, and have to go and find the good stuff again.
The good stuff is on the floor. Weapons come back 5 seconds after they're taken, health and armour in about half a minute, and the powerups — Quad Damage, Haste, Invisibility, Regeneration and the Battle Suit — last 30 seconds and take two minutes to return, so knowing when the Quad is due is half the game.
Somebody arriving mid-match can sit straight down and play, and anyone who'd rather watch can spectate. When it's over, one click starts the rematch.
What you're signing up for.
| Game | First-person arena shooter, free-for-all deathmatch |
|---|---|
| Players | 1 to 8 in a match; everyone else in the room can spectate |
| Win | First to the frag limit (5–50, default 20), or most frags when time runs out (1–30 minutes, default 10) |
| Levels | 29, all from OpenArena; one per match, or rotate through them |
| Weapons | Gauntlet, Machinegun, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Lightning Gun, Railgun, Plasma Gun |
| Pickups | Health, Mega Health, armour, ammo, Medkit, Personal Teleporter |
| Powerups | Quad Damage (triple damage), Haste, Invisibility, Regeneration, Battle Suit — 30 seconds each |
| Movement | Quake III Arena's: strafe jumping, rocket jumps, jump pads, teleporters, lifts |
| Modes | Deathmatch, or instagib (one-hit railguns, no pickups) |
| Keyboard & mouse | WASD to move, mouse to aim, click to fire, right-click to scope, Space to jump, Ctrl or C to crouch, 1–9 weapons, Q last weapon, F use item, Tab scores, Y chat |
| Phone | Movement stick, look pad, fire, jump and scope buttons |
| Bots | None — bring friends |
| Video chat | Built into the room; your camera is your player's face |
| Download | None, runs in the browser |
| Cost | Free |
Every one of them from OpenArena, several of them remakes of maps you'll know from Quake.
Levels from OpenArena, used under CC BY-SA 3.0 and credited level by level in the lobby. Blast Arena is not affiliated with id Software; Quake is a trademark of its owner.
Blast Arena is the closest thing: a Quake 3-style deathmatch that runs in the browser with nothing to install. It isn't id Software's Quake — it's Kosmi's own engine — but the movement is tuned to Quake III Arena's numbers, so strafe jumping and rocket jumps work, and every level is from OpenArena, the free game built in Quake 3's image.
Create a Kosmi room with Blast Arena in it and send your friends the room link. The match begins by itself as soon as two of you are seated, and after a short countdown you all spawn. No account is needed to join, and someone who arrives mid-match can sit straight down and play.
Yes. The arena, every level, every weapon and the video chat are free, with no limit on matches. Kosmi Premium exists for other things, but nothing in Blast Arena is paywalled.
Up to eight in a match. Anyone else in the room can spectate, and you can start a match on your own to learn a level — the next person to sit down begins a fresh one.
WASD or the arrow keys to move, the mouse to aim, click to fire, right-click to use the railgun's scope, Space to jump, Ctrl or C to crouch, 1 to 9 to pick a weapon, Q for the last one, F to use a carried item, Tab for the scoreboard and Y to chat. On a phone there's a movement stick, a look pad, and fire, jump and scope buttons.
Eight, with the classic arena shooter's numbers: the Gauntlet, Machinegun, Shotgun, Grenade Launcher, Rocket Launcher, Lightning Gun, Railgun and Plasma Gun. Nothing reloads and there are no headshots. You pick weapons and ammo up off the map, along with health, armour, and powerups like Quad Damage and Haste.
Yes. Turn it on in the lobby and everybody spawns with a railgun that kills in one hit, with no pickups on the map.
Not yet. Blast Arena is for playing against people you invite, which is what the room link is for.
Yes. On a phone the arena runs in a tall tile with the room's chat underneath, and you play with on-screen touch controls. Guests join straight from the link without signing up.
OpenArena, a free and open-source arena shooter. Its levels are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence, and Blast Arena uses them under that licence, crediting each level in the lobby. The engine, weapons, player figures and textures are Kosmi's own.