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Blast
Arcade · Oldies · plays in your browser, no download
You drop a bomb and walk away. It goes off in a cross, and the blast stops at the first wall — which means a wall genuinely shelters you, and the number of squares you need between yourself and the bomb is a number you can count before you press anything.
Where it comes from
The maze with bombs arrives in the arcades at the start of the eighties, and its idea is a reversal: the weapon is not aimed, it is put down. The bomb goes off a few seconds later, in a cross, and it does not tell the person who placed it apart from anybody standing nearby.
Everything else follows from that. You break a wall to open yourself a route, but the route is open for the others too; you run from your own explosion; and the most dangerous thing on the screen is the one you put there. It is a game about learning to count to three.
How to play
| Move | Arrow keys, or the pad on a phone. One square at a time. |
|---|---|
| Drop a bomb | Space, or the button. It goes off a few seconds later. |
| The blast | A cross — up, down, left and right — that stops dead at the first solid wall. |
| Soft walls | Breakable. The blast destroys them and stops there, so it does not continue past. |
Because the blast is a cross and not a circle, standing round a corner is completely safe, one square away, while standing in line is fatal at several. Most deaths in this game are people who retreated in the wrong direction, not people who retreated too slowly.
Our version
Clear, square-counted blasts so there is never any doubt whether you are in range, in a browser tab on a phone or a laptop.
Three things that help
Plan the escape before you drop. Decide which corner you are going to, then place the bomb. Doing it the other way round is how you end up trapped in a dead end you made yourself.
Open a second way out. Working down a corridor with one exit is fine until something comes along it.
Chain reactions are a tool, not an accident. A bomb caught in another bomb’s blast goes off early, which is sometimes exactly what you want and sometimes exactly what kills you.