Boom Box Beginner's Guide: How to Play the Bomberman-Style Arena

What Boom Box is

Boom Box is a free bomberman-style browser game. Four fighters start in the four corners of a toy box arena full of crates. You walk around, drop bombs, blast through the crates and try to catch the other fighters in your explosions. The last fighter standing wins the round.

One or two people can play on one keyboard, and bots take every empty spot, so there are always four fighters. You can also play online with up to four people using a 6-digit code. Play it at hqbg.ai/boombox on a computer. When you know the basics, the Boom Box strategy guide covers trapping, chain reactions and beating the bots.

How a round works

1. 1

   3, 2, 1, GO

   Everyone starts in a corner with one bomb and a small blast. The cells right around each corner are always clear of crates so you have room to move.

2. 2

   Blast the crates

   Bombs explode 2.4 seconds after you drop them. The blast runs in a plus shape, up, down, left and right, and breaks the first crate it hits in each direction.

3. 3

   Pick up power-ups

   About a third of the crates leave a power-up behind. Walk over it to collect it.

4. 4

   Survive the walls

   After 60 seconds the walls start closing in, one block at a time. Anyone caught under a falling block is out.

5. 5

   Last one standing

   A fighter touched by a blast is out for the round. The last fighter left gets a star. If everyone goes out together, nobody gets one.

Stars add up round after round, and each fighter's total shows on the round-over card. Press Space or Enter for the next round. Changing between 1 Player and 2 Players resets the stars.

Boom Box controls

Boom Box works as one of those two player games on one keyboard: each player has their own side of the keys. Controllers work too, one per player.

In 1 Player mode you are Gnorman, the garden gnome, against three bots. In 2 Players mode Player 1 is Gnorman and Player 2 is Toasty, the angry toaster, with two bots. Settings → Controllers shows which controller belongs to which player and has a live button tester.

The arena

The arena is a grid 15 cells wide and 13 tall, counting the outer wall. Fixed pillars stand on every second cell in a checker pattern, so the open floor forms a grid of crossing lanes. Around three quarters of the remaining cells start with a crate. The pillars and the outer wall never break, and they stop a blast cold.

• Gnorman (red) starts top left.
• Sir Quacks (yellow) starts top right.
• Toasty (blue) starts bottom right.
• Inky (purple) starts bottom left.

The three power-ups

Each crate you break has a 32% chance to drop a power-up, picked at random from the three. Power-ups can be destroyed: a blast that passes over a power-up lying on the floor burns it. Your current bombs, blast size and speed show in the bar at the top of the screen.

The closing walls

A timer at the top counts down "Walls close in". At 60 seconds the game shows HURRY! and metal blocks start dropping from the sky, one every third of a second. They start in the top-left corner and spiral clockwise around the edge of the arena, ring by ring, toward the middle. The next three cells glow red before a block lands there.

A block destroys any bomb or power-up on its cell and knocks out any fighter standing there. It takes under 50 seconds to fill the whole arena, so no round lasts much longer than a minute and a half. Move toward the middle before the spiral reaches your side.

Playing Boom Box online

Choose Play online from the main menu on hqbg.ai. One person hosts and gets a 6-digit code; up to three friends type it in. The host plays Gnorman and each friend takes over one of the bot fighters. A friend who leaves mid-round is replaced by a bot. Online play needs the website version of the game; the controller guide helps if you want to play online with a pad.

Boom Box questions