Blast Arena

About the game

Blast Arena is a classic bomb-dropping arena: a grid of walls and breakable blocks, up to ten little robots, and one rule. Put a bomb down, step away before it goes off, and let the cross of flames catch the others. Blocks that burn sometimes leave power-ups behind, and the last robot alive wins the round. Several rounds make a match, and the scoreboard under the arena keeps a count of kills and wins.

The power-ups are what make each round different. A flame makes your blasts longer, a bomb lets you drop one more at a time, shoes make you faster or let you kick a bomb across the floor, a spring makes you jump, a boxing glove punches bombs away, a throwing glove lifts them and tosses them over walls, and a detonator sets them off when you choose. There are also unlucky items: a disease that can slow you down or make you drop bombs without asking.

The game has fifteen maps. Some are plain, some have teleports and trampolines, and some shake with earthquakes. You can play against computer-controlled robots, with one to three people at the same keyboard, or both.

Playing it here

The first time you click Play the page downloads the Python runtime and the pygame library (about 23 MB), which takes a few seconds; after that a "click to start" message appears, and one more click starts the game. The download is kept by your browser, so the other pygame games on the site open faster. Nothing is loaded from other sites. Your settings are saved in this browser. The music of the original is not included in this version, so you only hear the sound effects.

The menu works with the arrow keys and the bomb key of the first player (C), or with the mouse. "Let's play!" opens the setup: choose who plays (a player, a bot or nobody for each of the ten slots), how many games to play, and then the map. Since a keyboard has room for only a few players, the other slots are best left to bots.

Controls

Esc opens the menu during a game. Mouse control for another player can be switched on in the settings menu.

A few things worth knowing

Do not trap yourself. A bomb blocks the tile it sits on once you step off it, so a corner and a bomb of your own can be the end of you. Always leave yourself a way out of the cross.

Special does different things for different power-ups. With the detonator it sets your bombs off; with the boxing glove it punches the bomb in front of you; with the throwing glove it picks a bomb up and throws it.

Pick the map for the match. The classic map is a good start. Maps with teleports and trampolines reward players who learn where the exits are.

Frequently asked questions

Does it save my progress? Only the settings (volume, key bindings, mouse control) are saved in your browser. There is no campaign to save.

Can I play alone? Yes: pick player 1 and fill the other slots with bots.

Does it work on a phone? It needs a keyboard, so it is meant for a computer.

Why is there no music? The tracks of the original were made by other people, and we could not confirm that they were released as free as the game itself, so we left them out.

Is it free? Yes, completely: the author released the game, with its images and sounds, into the public domain (CC0).

Credits and licence

Blast Arena was made by Miloslav Ciz ("tastyfish") under the name Bombman, and he released the game and its media under CC0 1.0. This version changes the code only to make it run in a browser (asynchronous main loop, a few Python 2 details), renames the game, redraws the title on the menu and uses the Liberation Sans font (SIL Open Font License 1.1). The changes and the source are linked from the Licenses page, and the game runs on pygame-ce (LGPL-2.1) and CPython, whose licences and source are linked there too.