About Boltline
Boltline is a free 3D first-person shooter that runs in the browser, built for the kind of quick, fast arena rounds that games like Krunker made popular, and made from scratch for this site. Pick a class and drop into a room: Vanguard with the Corsair rifle and two frags, Runner with the Wasp SMG and smoke, Bulwark with the Breaker shotgun and a deployable barrier, Wraith with the Arbalest sniper, Marksman with the Warden DMR, or Sapper with the Howler launcher. Every class carries a pistol and a knife, and classes trade health for speed.
Movement is the heart of it. Sprint, slide, jump out of the slide and slide again when you land to keep the speed; strafe in the air, mantle onto ledges, drop onto a rooftop from above. Hitscan weapons have recoil patterns, damage falloff and headshot multipliers; the launcher lobs shells that splash round corners. Health comes back when you stay out of the fight for a few seconds.
Five arenas with their own light: Dunecrest, a desert outpost at noon; Wetwire, rain-wet rooftops at dusk with a city below; Aurora Station, a snowbound research post under the northern lights; Rustharbour, container docks at sunset; and Neon Yard, an arcade lot after midnight. Free for all, team deathmatch and king of the hill rotate through them. Quick play drops you into the best room, a private room gives you a five-letter code and a link for friends, and bots fill every empty slot so a match is always on. Practice mode runs the same game offline against bots.
Under the hood an authoritative server simulates every room sixty times a second, sends compact binary snapshots twenty times a second, predicts your own movement on your machine and rewinds the world to your view when it judges a shot, so hits land where you saw them even on a slow connection. Your best match score goes to the Top 10, and XP earns levels, titles and crosshair styles.
How to play
- Pick a class and a mode, then Quick play to join a room, Create private room for a code to share, or Practice vs bots.
- Click the arena to lock the mouse. Move with WASD, sprint with Shift, jump with Space, crouch or slide with C or Ctrl.
- Shoot with the left button, aim down sights with the right. R reloads, 1 2 3 or Q switch weapons, F is the knife, G throws your gadget.
- Free for all and team deathmatch are won by kills. In king of the hill, stand in the glowing zone to score; it moves every minute.
- Hold Tab for the scoreboard, Enter opens chat, Y sends a quick message, Esc opens settings. Change class while you wait to respawn.
- On a phone turn it sideways: the left thumb moves (push far to sprint) and dragging the right side looks. Hold the red button to fire and keep dragging on it to follow your target while you shoot; tap AIM to raise the sight and again to lower it. Smaller buttons jump, slide, reload, swap weapons, throw and knife.
Controls
| Mouse | Look; left button fires, right button aims down sights, wheel switches weapon |
|---|---|
| W A S D | Move |
| Shift | Sprint |
| Space | Jump; hold at a ledge to mantle |
| C / Ctrl | Crouch; while sprinting, slide |
| R | Reload |
| 1 / 2 / 3, Q | Primary, pistol, knife; Q swaps to the last weapon |
| F or V | Knife attack |
| G | Throw your gadget (frag, smoke or barrier) |
| Tab (hold) | Scoreboard |
| Enter / Y | Chat / quick messages |
| Esc | Settings, release the mouse |
| Gamepad | Sticks move and look, triggers fire and aim, A jump, B slide, X reload, Y switch, bumpers gadget and knife |
| Touch | Left thumb moves; drag on the right to look, also while holding the fire button; tap AIM to raise or lower the sight; buttons for everything else |
Tips
- Slide-hop: sprint, press crouch to slide, jump out of it, and press crouch again the moment you land. Each slide keeps most of your speed.
- Aim down sights for long shots and hip-fire up close; moving and jumping widens your spread, crouching tightens it. Aiming clears the gun out of the way: a scope picture on the Arbalest and the Warden, a see-through lens with a dot on everything else.
- Headshots hit harder, up to double on most guns and 2.2 times on the Arbalest, which drops anyone with one to the head. The Warden takes a head shot and one more for most classes.
- Health regenerates after five seconds out of combat. Break line of sight behind a container or a smoke cloud and come back full.
- In king of the hill, a Bulwark barrier on the hill edge and a Sapper shell on the approach win more than a kill streak. The hill moves every minute: watch the marker.
- Private rooms: the host can change bots and skill in settings; share the link from the scoreboard.
Questions
Is Boltline multiplayer?
Yes. Quick play puts you in a public room of up to ten; a private room gives you a five-letter code and a link to share. Bots fill empty slots so there is always a fight, and leave as people arrive.
Is it like Krunker?
It is the same kind of game: a fast, stylised browser FPS with classes and short rounds, and it borrows nothing else. The maps, classes, weapons, art, sound and code were all made for this site.
Do I need to download anything?
No. The whole game is a few hundred kilobytes of code that your browser fetches like any page; the 3D engine is the largest part. No account, no install, no plug-in.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, held sideways. Your left thumb moves, dragging the right side looks, and on-screen buttons cover firing, aiming, jumping, sliding, reloading and gadgets. You can keep dragging on the fire button to follow a target while you shoot, and a light aim assist slows the turn when you are on someone (it can be switched off in the settings). A gamepad works on any device.
How do hits register with lag?
The server keeps a second of movement history and rewinds the other players to the moment you saw them when it judges your shot, so what you aimed at is what counts. Your own movement is predicted on your machine and corrected quietly.
Is there a leaderboard?
Your best match score goes to a public Top 10 under the player name you choose. XP from every match earns levels, titles and crosshair styles, saved in your browser.