About Bumper Brawl
Seven bots, a shrinking rink and best of three or five rounds. Pick Easy, Normal or Hard bots, and put your best match of the week on the leaderboard.
Bumper Brawl is a free 3D bumper car game on a round sheet of ice floating on the sea. Up to eight cars slide around it, and the idea is simple: ram everyone else off the edge and be the last car on. Every few seconds the outer ring of ice flashes and falls away, so the rink keeps shrinking and nobody can hide for long. Win enough rounds and you win the match. Play against seven bots, or live online with friends and anyone who drops in.
Also called: bumper cars game, push off the edge game, sumo cars, knockout game.
How to play Bumper Brawl
- Press Play. Your car has a yellow name tag that says You, in the paint and hat you picked.
- On a computer, steer with the arrow keys or WASD. On a phone, put your thumb down on the left half of the rink and drag like a joystick. Your car turns towards the way you push and speeds up that way.
- It's ice, so you slide. A car keeps most of its speed and drifts sideways through turns. Steer early and let go before the edge.
- Press Space or Shift (or the big Boost button) for a burst of speed. Boost then needs a couple of seconds to refill: the ring round the button fills up when it's ready.
- Bump the others off the edge. The faster you hit, the further they fly, and a boosted hit is the hardest of all. A car whose middle goes past the edge is out of the round.
- Grab the power-ups that pop up on the ice: Heavy, Shockwave, Speed, Shield and Magnet. Each works the moment you drive over it.
- Watch the edge. When the outer ring flashes, it falls three seconds later, with anyone still on it.
- The last car on the ice wins the round. Win two rounds (or three in a best of five) to win the match.
Rules
- A match is best of three or best of five rounds. A round starts with every car spaced round the middle and a three-second countdown.
- From the middle to the edge the rink is about eight cars wide, in rings. Twelve seconds after GO the outer ring starts to flash, and three seconds later it falls. Then the next ring goes every seven seconds, until nothing is left.
- A car is out when its centre passes the edge of the ice that's left. If the last cars go out on the same moment, the one nearest the middle wins the round.
- A knockout counts for the last car that bumped the one that fell, if that bump was in the last three and a half seconds. Otherwise the car fell off by itself.
- Cars bounce off each other by their speeds and weights. A boosting car hits about 75% harder. Boost can be used again after 2.5 seconds (1.4 with Speed).
- Heavy (8 seconds): your car gets bigger and more than twice as heavy, and pushes harder. Speed (6 seconds): more push, a higher top speed and a faster boost. Shield (6 seconds): bumps barely move you, and the other car bounces off harder. Magnet (5 seconds): pulls nearby cars towards you. Shockwave: knocks every car near you outwards, at once.
- At most two power-ups are on the ice at a time, and each lasts thirteen seconds, or until the ice under it falls.
- The weekly leaderboard ranks solo matches against the bots: 100 points a knockout, 250 a round won and 500 for winning the match, times two against Normal bots and three against Hard ones. The server replays every match from your inputs to check the score.
Bumper Brawl tips and strategy
- Stay near the middle and let the others come to you. A car on the edge is one bump from going out; a car in the middle can take a hit.
- Hit from the inside. Get between your target and the middle, then ram it outwards. A sideways bump only spins it round.
- Save your boost for the hit, or to save yourself. A boost aimed back at the middle can rescue a car that's sliding off.
- When the edge flashes, get off the outer ring early. Cars sliding in from the edge are easy pickings for anyone waiting inside.
- Shield and Heavy make you a wall: drive straight at people. With Magnet, pull them in and let them have it. Shockwave is best in a crowd near the edge.
- Bots on Hard read the edge well and lead their target. Let two of them fight it out, then bump the winner while it's off balance.
- If you're knocked out early in a solo match, you can fast forward to the next round.
Bumper Brawl questions
Can I play with my friends?
Yes. Open the Online tab, make a room and send the link or the six-letter code, or let them scan the QR code. Up to eight cars play in a room. The host picks best of three or five, and whether bots fill the empty seats and how good they are. Quick play puts you in a room with whoever is around, with bots making up the numbers.
What happens if I join a match that's already going?
You watch the rest of the round, then take over a bot's car when the next round starts. If someone leaves in the middle of a match, a bot drives their car on.
Is online play fair?
The server runs the whole game and decides every bump and every knockout, so nobody can cheat by changing the page. Your own car is drawn a moment ahead of the server's word, from your own steering, so it answers instantly even on a slower connection; the other cars are drawn smoothly a moment behind.
How is the leaderboard checked?
Your solo matches against the bots are recorded as your steering and boosts, tick by tick. When a match ends, the server replays it from the start with the same rules and the same bots, and only the score the replay makes counts. It also checks the match wasn't played faster than it runs.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. Drag on the left half of the rink to steer and tap the Boost button on the right. The rink fits the screen held upright, and the game pauses when you switch apps.
Is there sound?
Yes: bonks, boosts, cracking ice, splashes and your engine, all made in the browser. The speaker button in the toolbar turns it off.
Is Bumper Brawl free to play?
Yes. Bumper Brawl on Kultured Arcade is completely free: no download, no account and nothing to buy. It runs in any modern browser on a phone, tablet or computer.