Arcade runs classic action games and adventures directly in your browser via WebAssembly. No downloads, no plugins: the game engine runs natively in your browser.
Starting an Arcade Session
Double-click the Arcade desktop icon, or open Start ▸ Games ▸ Arcade. The Arcade holds a folder per kind of game, as in the list below, and each folder shows its games with a screenshot of each, as the catalogue on the site does. Anyone can look through them.
Choose a game to see its details in the Arcade window: a screenshot, the keyboard controls and tips, as on its page.
Then press Play now, which opens the game in a browser tab of its own.
To play, you must be registered and identified:
/ns identify
The game's tab is yours, not the chat's: closing it does not end the session, and the chat cannot close it for you. While a game is running, Open the game tab brings the address back if you closed it and Back ends the session and returns to the folder the game came from. End Session finishes the session, and so does leaving it alone for a while.
Each game has a channel of its own, like #doom-shareware, where a bot says who starts it. Arcade Channels
First-Person Shooters
- DOOM: Knee-Deep in the Dead — Episode 1 — The Original · How to play
- Freedoom: Phase 1 — 36 levels of open-source doom · How to play
- Freedoom: Phase 2 — 32 levels — Doom II compatible · How to play
- FreeDM — Deathmatch arena — open source · How to play
- Chex Quest — The cereal box classic · How to play
- HacX: Twitch 'n Kill — Cyberpunk total conversion · How to play
- REKKR: Sunken Land — Viking-themed standalone · How to play
- Quake: Dimension of the Doomed — Episode 1 — The Original · How to play
- LibreQuake — Open-source Quake replacement · How to play
- Quake II: The Invasion — Unit 1 — The Demo · How to play
- Wolfenstein 3D: Escape from Castle — Episode 1 — The Shareware Classic · How to play
- Half-Life: Uplink — The Official Demo — 3 Unique Missions · How to play
Adventures
- Beneath a Steel Sky — Cyberpunk point & click adventure (1994) · How to play
- Drascula: The Vampire Strikes Back — Comedic Dracula parody adventure (1996) · How to play
- Dreamweb — Dark cyberpunk adventure (1994) · How to play
- Flight of the Amazon Queen — Comic adventure in the Amazon (1995) · How to play
- Lure of the Temptress — Medieval fantasy adventure (1992) · How to play
- Soltys — Surreal Polish puzzle adventure (1995) · How to play
Technology
Half-Life: Uplink is powered by Xash3D-FWGS (GoldSource reimplementation compiled to WebAssembly). Wolfenstein 3D is powered by ECWolf-JS (ECWolf compiled to WebAssembly via Emscripten). DOOM games are powered by Dwasm (PrBoom+ compiled to WebAssembly). Quake games are powered by Qwasm (QuakeSpasm compiled to WebAssembly). Quake II is powered by Qwasm2 (Yamagi Quake II compiled to WebAssembly). All support keyboard, mouse, and gamepad input.
Session Timeouts
Pending sessions expire in 5 minutes. The lobby expires after 15 minutes of inactivity (with a warning at 10 minutes).
See Also
Half-Life (Arcade) · Wolfenstein 3D (Arcade) · DOOM (Arcade) · Quake (Arcade) · Quake II (Arcade) · ScummVM Adventures