PVP
Blast Royale
Trap rivals, control escape routes, and be the last bomber standing across a host-selected series.
BOOMER // NEW PLAYER BRIEFING
HOW TO MAKE A BEAUTIFUL MESS
Light the fuse. Own the arena.
Boomer is a fast 4-player pixel-art bomb battler where every crate, chain reaction, pickup, and augment can flip the match. Trap rivals, clear routes, grab upgrades, and survive the arena alone or with a crew.
PLAY NOW4MAX PLAYERS
11×9–19×15ARENA RANGE
18AUGMENTS
90SROUND CLOCK
PICK YOUR MAYHEM
Three ways to wreck the grid
PVE
Raid Rumble
Fight escalating enemy waves, protect the team, and survive until the round clock expires.
PVP + PVE
Mixed Mayhem
Rival players, bots, and monsters collide in the same arena, turning every route into a gamble.
THE CORE LOOP
Read. Plant. Escape. Adapt.
Read the grid
Spot escape lanes, soft crates, rival routes, and dangerous blast lines before committing.
Plant with an exit
Bombs travel in straight blast lines. Make room to escape before the fuse reaches zero.
Chain the arena
Explosions ignite nearby bombs, letting one smart plant cut off several routes at once.
Collect and adapt
Break crates for upgrades, then shape a new build through each Mayhem Cache draft.
ARENA ELEMENTS
What can change a round
Bombs & blast lines
Flames travel up, down, left, and right. Walls stop them, crates break, and nearby bombs detonate early. A live bomb is solid: nobody walks through one. The bomber standing on the bomb they just planted may step off it in any direction, but the moment they clear that tile it blocks them like everyone else — there is no walking back on. Only Street Kicker (shove the bomb along) and Ghost Circuit (phase onto its tile) get you past one.
Movement & lane assist
Bombers move freely, not tile by tile, but the grid still guides them. Turn into a gap while straddling a pillar, crate, or bomb and the game slides you into the lane most of your body already occupies and keeps going, instead of snagging on the overhanging corner. Running along an open corridor gently re-centres you so the snag rarely forms. You are never pulled into a neighbouring lane, and a live bomb blocks the slide just as it blocks a step.
Terrain Drift
The arena rearranges itself. On the host's interval — off, every 15s, every 30s — every crate on the board slides one tile in the same direction, 3 seconds after the shift is telegraphed. The opening direction is rolled from the match seed and each later shift turns clockwise: right → down → left → up. A whole line of crates travels as one block, and a crate never crushes or shoves anything: it stops dead against a wall or pillar, a live bomb, a loose pickup, a flame, one of the four spawn corners, or any bomber or monster standing where it wanted to go. Only crates move — read the warning, because the cover you are hiding behind may not be there in 3 seconds.
Crates & 6 pickups
Destroyed crates drop blast range, bomb capacity, movement speed, a spare shield, a 3-second dash surge, or a score shard.
Mayhem Cache · 18 augments
An opening draft starts round 1, then every round holds two mid-round caches at 30s and 60s. Choose one of three offers; picks persist through the series, and if the timer expires one of the three is taken for you at random.
Controlled randomness
Seeded maps, drops, bots, waves, and offers keep matches fresh; cleared spawn pockets and a crate-free central cross keep openings readable, while the pillar lattice stays intact at every arena size.
Bots on 3 circuits
Hosts fill up to 3 empty seats and pick a bot circuit. Every bot routes with a real planner: it flood-fills the grid for safe tiles, never plants a bomb it cannot escape, and walks to nearby pickups. Rookie bots re-plan slowly, fumble escapes, and draft blind; Overclocked bots re-plan constantly, hunt aggressively, read blast lines several tiles ahead, and draft the best offer every time. The same circuits drive local and online matches.
4 arena modifiers
Every match rolls one modifier from its seed and the banner is a real rule: CROSSFIRE, GLASSWORKS, PRESSURE GRID, JUNKYARD. A rematch rolls a fresh one.
3 Raid Rumble monsters
Waves land every 25 seconds and grow with the wave count. SparkMite, BombBeetle, BrickOgre each fight differently, and every flame tick chips one HP off whatever it touches.
Arcade sound & music
Every fuse, blast, crate, pickup, hit, and draft has a synthesized chiptune cue, panned and faded by distance, over a quiet music bed that speeds up in the last 20 seconds of a round. Nothing is downloaded. Browsers need one click or key press before sound starts, and Settings has separate SFX and music sliders plus a mute that the HUD speaker button shares.
Instant controls online
The server simulates at 20 ticks per second and stays authoritative, but your own bomber is predicted locally and reconciled against every snapshot, so movement answers on the next frame and a planted bomb shows a ghost until the server confirms it. Add ?netdebug=1 to the arena URL to watch round-trip time and correction size.
Records & leaderboard
Every finished online match feeds a per-server leaderboard ranked by wins then score, a recent-match list, and your own career line, all shown in the RECORDS panel of the ready room and summarized after each match. Bots never appear on the board.
3 arena sizes
Hosts can tune the grid from Compact 11×9 to Large 19×15. Odd dimensions preserve four fair corner starts and a true center lane.
4 animated bombers
Each bomber has 4-direction pixel-art movement with 4 walk frames. Reduced-motion settings keep characters steady and remove arena shake.
Modular character looks
Visual-only gear is layered over the base character across 4 future-ready slots. Pick from 6 headwear and 4 face options; loadouts never change combat stats.
Health, lives & hit safety
Damage removes one HP. At zero HP, an extra life respawns you with full health; no lives means elimination. Every health hit grants the host-selected protection window, shown by a flashing SAFE state. Banked shield charges carry between rounds.
Rounds always resolve
Waiting on a respawn still counts as being in the round, so you keep drafting. If the 90-second clock runs out with more than one bomber standing, the round goes to whoever scored the most in THAT round alone — your running match total does not carry over — and a tie is a drawn round that awards nobody a round win. The series champion is still the leader on round wins, then total score, so PvE and Mixed matches never stall.
- Fire
- Blast range +1, up to 8 tiles.
- Bomb
- Carry one more live bomb, up to 6.
- Speed
- Permanent +0.32 movement speed.
- Shield
- Banks a charge that eats one blast hit.
- Dash
- A 3-second speed surge the moment you grab it.
- Shard
- +75 score, no combat change.
CONTROLS
Controls
Move
WASDArrow keys
Plant bomb
Space
Trigger remote bomb
Requires the Tether Mine augment.
E
Touch controls
Movement, bomb, and trigger buttons appear on smaller screens.
On-screen controls
SETTINGS & ACCESSIBILITY
Key rebinding
Settings → Controls lets you press a new key for every action. Binding a key that another action owns swaps the two; Escape and Tab stay reserved. Reset restores the defaults listed above.
Touch layout
Choose the enlarged D-pad or a floating thumb stick: touch down anywhere on the left half to set its centre, drag past the dead zone for a direction, and release to stop.
Player markers
Floats a circle, triangle, square, or diamond over each bomber by seat, and repeats it in the roster and final standings.
High-contrast palette
Swaps the four seat colours for a deuteranopia- and protanopia-safe set across the arena, HUD, and chat.
First-run hints
New players see a three-line arena briefing and a one-line Mayhem Cache tip once. Show hints again brings them back.
Sound
Mute, SFX volume, and music volume. The HUD speaker button is the same mute.
Every preference is stored on your device only, in browser storage, and never leaves it.
LOBBIES & CHAT
Bring the crew—or fill with bots
Create a room, share its four-character code, fill open seats with bots, and use lobby or match chat to coordinate. The host controls mode, arena size, BO1, BO3, BO5, bot fill and circuit, starting HP, extra lives, the post-hit safety window, and how often Terrain Drift slides the crates before lighting the fuse. When a match ends the room drops back into the ready screen with the same code, so a rematch is one host click. Drop out mid-match and you are eliminated on the spot; lose your connection instead and your bomber stands still for a 20-second reconnect grace. Lobby chat is private to that room and is erased when the room closes.
Mode
Choose PvP, PvE, or Mixed Mayhem.
Arena size
Compact 11×9, Standard 15×13, Large 19×15. Smaller grids force faster clashes; larger grids create longer routes.
PvP series
Choose BO1, BO3, BO5 in Blast Royale.
Bot fill
Fill exactly 0 to 3 open seats with bots, in local and online lobbies alike.
Bot circuit
Choose Rookie, Rival, Overclocked. Higher circuits re-plan faster, chase harder, bomb more often, and read blast lines further ahead.
Starting health
Choose 1 HP, 2 HP, 3 HP, 4 HP. Each hit removes one HP.
Extra lives
Choose no respawn, +1 respawn, +2 respawns, +3 respawns. +1 means two total bodies.
Hit shield
After health damage or a gear-shield break, protection lasts 0.5s, 1s, 1.5s, 2s.
Terrain drift
Slide the whole crate field one tile every 15s or every 30s, each shift telegraphed 3s ahead, or turn it off. Defaults to every 15s.
BO1BO3BO5
YOUR BOMBER // MODULAR LOADOUT
Swap the look. Keep the matchup fair.
Choose headwear and face gear before entering a lobby or Quick Play. Cosmetics are visual only and never change bombs, movement, pickups, or augments.
No hatHard hatBall capChampion crownBandanaSignal antenna
Bare facePixel shadesRespiratorWar paint
Boomer honors your device’s reduced-motion setting by holding character frames steady and disabling arena shake.
ARENA MODIFIERS // ONE PER MATCH
The banner is the rule
CROSSFIRE
Every bomber can kick bombs all match long, no augment required.
GLASSWORKS
The board starts with far fewer crates, but the ones there are almost always drop loot.
PRESSURE GRID
The arena closes in: the outer ring ignites at 60s and the next ring at 75s, each with a 5s warning.
JUNKYARD
Every crate drops a pickup, but loose pickups decay twice as fast.
RAID RUMBLE // THE ROSTER
Know your monsters
SparkMite
1 HPFastest thing on the board. Chases the nearest bomber but now sidesteps live flames and doomed tiles.
BombBeetle
2 HPCloses to two tiles, plants a short-fuse bomb of its own, then backs off. Its bombs chain with yours, can be kicked, and credit nobody.
BrickOgre
5 HPSlow and stubborn. Walks straight through crates and smashes them without dropping loot.
MAYHEM CACHE // 18 AUGMENTS
Every mod you can draft
Each cache offers three. Rarer tiers show up more often in the mid-round caches than in the opening draft, and stackable mods keep paying out every time you take them.
common
Slow Burn
Bomb fuse +0.35s. Blast range +1.
Quick Wick
×2Bomb fuse -0.24s.
Runner Core
×2+0.45 movement speed.
Blast Padding
Ignore the first blast hit each round.
Salvager
×2Crates have +12% drop chance and pickups last +1s per stack. Every pickup you collect pays +25 score.
Hot Feet
Planting grants a short speed burst.
uncommon
Street Kicker
Run into bombs to kick them.
Blast Hop
Store a dash charge that fires when you flee a threatened tile.
Echo Charge
Every second bomb creates an echo blast two tiles wide.
Demolitionist
×2Flames linger 0.22s longer.
Tether Mine
Trigger your newest bomb with E.
Bounty Circuit
Downing a rival pays bonus score and drops loot.
rare
Cross Burst
Blast endpoints fork one tile sideways.
Phoenix Chip
Survive one lethal hit each round.
Magnet Fuse
Loose pickups within two tiles drift toward you.
Chain Reactor
Chained bombs gain +2 blast range.
Ghost Circuit
Phase through a bomb every 5 seconds.
Arena Tax
Eliminations drop a basic pickup, and you gain +1 blast range while any rival is eliminated.
MAC MINI READY
Run the whole arena with Docker
Docker Compose serves the web game on port 3000 and the real-time lobby, chat, and match service on port 3001. Health checks use /healthz, and persistent data stays in data/boomer.db.
Exposing the arena beyond your LAN? Set LOBBY_PASSWORD and players will be asked for it once — the game stores it on their device and reuses it on every reconnect. Set ALLOWED_ORIGINS and the service refuses any connection from another site, or from a client that sends no origin at all. Quick Play never needs a password.
docker compose up -d --buildLATEST GUIDE UPDATE · R11
Terrain Drift: the arena rearranges itself
Crates no longer sit still. The whole crate field now slides one tile on the host-selected interval — every 15s, every 30s, or off — 3 seconds after the shift is telegraphed, and the direction rotates clockwise from a seeded opening roll, so the same seed drifts the same way every time. A line of crates travels as one block, and a crate stops dead rather than crushing anything: walls and pillars, live bombs, loose pickups, flames, the four spawn corners, and any bomber or monster in the way all hold their tile. Nothing but crates ever moves, the cover you are hiding behind can walk away from you, and bots re-plan against the board as it actually is. Terrain drift is on by default and hosts can retune or disable it in the lobby.