Player's Guide

BLACK HOLE ARENA

A duel fought inside a gravity well. Fly your ship, shove your rivals, and let the dark do the rest. Last one out of the hole wins.

The point

What you're trying to do

Every player controls a glowing ship floating near a black hole at the center of the arena. The hole is always pulling. You can't destroy anyone directly — instead you push them until gravity finishes the job.

Knock your rivals into the hole. Be the last one still flying.

Surviving a round scores a point for you (or your team). The first to 3 round wins takes the match.

The catch is that the same gravity working for you is working against you. Drift too close while chasing someone and you'll be the one who falls in. The whole game is a balance between pressing the attack and respecting the pull.

The core idea

How gravity actually behaves

The hole doesn't have a single edge — it has zones. The closer you drift, the harder it pulls, and there's a point of no return. Learning to read these bands is the entire skill of the game.

Zone 1 · Open space

Free flight

Far from the hole, your thrusters easily overcome gravity. Fly wherever you like.

Zone 2 · The bend

Your path starts to curve

Closer in, gravity noticeably tugs your trajectory. You can still escape, but you have to aim outward and commit.

Zone 3 · Capture (the dashed ring)

Thrust alone won't save you

Inside the capture ring, the pull equals or beats your engines. Full throttle outward is barely breaking even — a single nudge from a rival here is usually fatal.

Zone 4 · The event horizon

Consumed

Touch the black core and you're gone for the round. The ship bursts and you sit out until the next round begins.

On screen, the faint dashed circles around the hole mark these boundaries. The reddish dashed ring is the capture line — treat it like a cliff edge. The dashed ring around your own ship fills up as your weapon recharges.

Controls

Flying your ship

Everything is on the keyboard. Your thrusters fire in the direction you press — there's no friction in space, so you'll keep drifting after you let go. Plan your stops. Your ship is a little dart in your team colour, and its nose tells the truth about your flight: while your engines are firing it points the way you're thrusting, and when you let go and coast it swings around to follow the path you're actually flying — so a ship whipping around the hole visibly banks along its curve. Turning is smooth — your dart sweeps through a real rotation toward wherever it's headed instead of snapping between eight directions, and a turning mini-gun rakes its stream across the whole arc, which makes aiming feel natural. At the start of every round a quick reminder flashes on screen: Space → pulse (or mini-gun) and Shift → bomb on the left, the arrow keys for flying on the right.

↑ ↓ ← →

Thrust

Arrow keys (or WASD) fire your engines. Momentum carries you; tap against your drift to slow down.

Space

Pulse

A shockwave that shoves every nearby rival away from you. Needs to recharge between uses.

Shift

Bomb

Drops a stationary mine. Same recharge as the pulse — you pick one or the other each cycle.

Recharge: Pulse and bomb share a single energy charge that refills over about 4.5 seconds. The ring around your ship shows the progress; when it's full and glowing, you're armed again. Note that nothing fires during the 3-2-1 countdown — pulses, bombs and the mini-gun all wait until the round actually starts, just like your thrusters.
Mini-gun (optional): in Settings (⚙️) you can swap the pulse for a mini-gun — hold Space (or the pulse tap zone on mobile) to fire a continuous stream of bullets from your nose in the direction you're pointing. Bullets curve in the black hole's gravity, shove rivals on impact, and blow up any bomb they hit. They sip from the same recharge (about 18 bullets drains a full charge), so you can fire in bursts whenever there's any charge left, and the ring still gates your bomb. On mobile, the countdown reminder over the pulse zone reads MINI-GUN when it's selected. Two new touches: your bullets now curve slightly toward an enemy ship or a bomb when they pass close by — a gentle assist that rewards roughly-aimed fire without doing the aiming for you — and a pulse or bomb blast can swat bullets aside, knocking any shots caught in it off course, so a well-timed pulse is a real defense against incoming fire.

On a phone or tablet

On touch devices the game shows on-screen controls automatically, and it plays best in landscape — if you're holding the phone upright, an overlay will ask you to rotate it. A virtual joystick appears wherever your left thumb presses (a knob inside a ring): drag to thrust in any direction — and it's truly any direction: the stick is fully analog, so your ship flies and aims exactly where you point it, at any angle, not just up/down/left/right and the diagonals. That makes the mini-gun noticeably more precise on touch than on a keyboard. The whole right half of the screen is two tap zones — tap the top-right to drop a bomb, the bottom-right to fire a pulse. There are no small buttons to hunt for, so nothing covers the playfield. At the start of every round the two tap quadrants themselves light up — the whole top-right glows yellow for bomb, the whole bottom-right glows purple for pulse, each with an icon and label — so you always know which side does what. During the 3-2-1 countdown the left (joystick) half also lights up with a tap to steer hint, so a first-time player knows where to put their thumb. The game also slips into full screen on your first tap of a match to hide the browser bar — just rotate the phone back to portrait to drop out of full screen. Left-handed? Open Settings (⚙️) and swap the joystick and tap zones to the opposite sides. The on-screen controls never appear on desktop, and they stay clear of the player names and scores along the edges.

Your arsenal

Pulse, mini-gun & bomb

Every weapon does the same fundamental thing — apply force to push ships toward the hole — but each plays completely differently. Your primary fire (Space, or the pulse tap zone on mobile) is either the pulse or the mini-gun — you choose which in Settings (⚙️). The bomb (Shift, or the top-right tap zone) is always available on top of whichever you pick. All three draw from the same recharge ring.

Space · instant

The Pulse

  • Fires the moment you press it — a ring expands outward from your ship.
  • Pushes every rival in range away from you, all at once.
  • Strongest at point-blank and weaker the farther away the target is. Get close for a real shove; from far away it's barely a tap.
  • Can also swat aside incoming mini-gun fire and detonate a bomb from a short distance (as long as it's not your own bomb that you're still sitting on).
  • Costs a full charge per shot — a reactive jab you spend all at once.
Space · held stream

The Mini-gun

  • The alternative to the pulse — hold Space to fire a continuous stream of bullets from your nose in the direction you're facing.
  • Bullets curve in the black hole's gravity, shove rivals on impact, and blow up any bomb they strike.
  • They also home — a bullet noticeably curves toward an enemy ship or bomb that's roughly ahead of it, so near-misses bend into hits (wildly-off shots still miss).
  • Sips the shared charge (about 18 bullets empties a full ring), so you fire in bursts whenever there's charge left — and it still gates your bomb.
  • A pulse or bomb blast will knock your bullets off course, so aim is never a guarantee.
Shift · delayed

The Bomb

  • Drops where you are and stays put. A yellow ring counts down its 30-second fuse.
  • Explodes when anyone touches it, when its timer runs out, or when hit by a pulse or a bullet.
  • The blast throws everyone nearby — including you. Bombs play no favorites.
  • It won't blow up on you while you're placing it. You have to move away first; only then does it arm against you.

Think of the pulse as a reactive jab — great when a rival drifts close to the hole and you want to finish them. The mini-gun trades that one big shove for steady pressure and reach — herd a rival toward the edge with a sustained stream, but respect that a pulse can bat your shots away. The bomb is a trap: place it on the route a rival is likely to take, or between them and their only escape, and let them stumble into it. Whichever primary you run, the bomb is always your second option.

Ways to play

Modes & lineups

Play online with friends — one person hosts and shares a 4-character code, everyone else joins on their own device, and phones and computers can play together in the same lobby — or play practice solo against AI opponents to learn the physics. In practice the game keeps a running session record of how many matches you've taken versus the bots, shown after each match until you head back to the menu. Either way you choose a format and a player count.

When an online match ends, the results screen offers Return to Lobby (for everyone): the host lands back in the lobby to tweak settings and start another game, and guests wait there, still connected — or hit Back to bow out. When the host hits Start, a quick “Game starting” 3-2-1 plays for everyone before the usual in-match countdown, so nobody gets caught off guard.

Bot difficulty & weapon: when bots fill the empty seats you pick their skill — 1 (easy) to 3 (brutal) — and now their weapon too: Pulse, Mini-gun, or Random. Random gives each bot its own weapon, so one match can throw a mix of shovers and gunners at you. The mini-gun tiers feel very different. A level 1 gunner is easy but no longer asleep: it drifts into range, takes slow wild pot-shots (and will fire even if you walk right up to it), and bumps you now and then — but its aim is so loose and its trigger so lazy that the occasional hard hit is rare enough to shrug off. A level 2 gunner is a genuine mid-tier opponent: its shots now carry real punch, though its aim is loose and it doesn't fire constantly, so a sharper player can read it and win. A level 3 gunner is brutal — accurate, relentless, and hitting hard, it'll walk a stream of fire into you and shove you toward the hole fast; your defence is to keep juking and scatter its shots with a well-timed pulse. (Bots hit at about three-quarters of a human's mini-gun power, so they feel dangerous when they connect — the difference between levels is mostly how often they connect and how hard they crowd you.) Pulse bots (the shovers) now scale in how hard they hunt you, not just raw skill. A level 1 pulse bot mostly leaves you alone — it doesn't really chase, it drifts around its own safe orbit and only half-drifts in your direction, so it rarely gets close enough to bump you. When you do come to it, it's bad at timing its pulse and usually misjudges the moment (a rare well-timed one still hits at full strength). It never bombs. A level 2 pulse bot commits more but stays measured — it comes after you, picks its moments, and bombs occasionally, clearly a step below 3. A level 3 pulse bot is relentless — it hunts you down, parks right on top of you, shoves at almost any opening at full force, and bombs freely; expect constant pressure. Bomb usage climbs sharply with level (none → some → lots), whether a bot carries the pulse or the mini-gun. Bots also no longer camp the arena walls — they always peel back toward open space.

⚔️ Free-for-all

Everyone for themselves, 2 to 4 players. The last ship still flying wins the round. With more players the middle gets crowded fast — and a crowd near a black hole is a dangerous place to be.

🤝 Team play

Two against two. Your teammate's pulses and bombs can still throw you around, so coordinate. The last team with anyone alive wins the round.

Public games & the game browser

When you create an online game you can mark it Public or Private. A private game is reachable only by its 4-character code — share it with whoever you like. A public game also appears in the Browse games list, so anyone can find it and join with a single tap, no code needed. The list shows the host's name, the format, and how many seats are filled; full games can't be joined, and a game quietly drops off the list once the match starts or the host leaves. When you host a public game, a small Lobby status line shows a yellow “listing…” until your game actually appears in the browse list for others, then turns to a green “Available to join” — it can take a few seconds, and that's normal.

Leaving & being left: if someone leaves, you'll see a quick note about it — “Name left the session” when a player drops, or “The host left” if the host bows out (their departing warns them first that everyone will be sent out). Nobody freezes anymore: a leaving player's ship simply disappears and play continues, and if the host leaves you're cleanly sent back to where it makes sense — the public games list if you found the game there, otherwise the main menu. Guests waiting in the lobby also see the host's game settings (meteors, sudden death) update live, read-only.
Note: the Browse games button only shows up once the game has been pointed at a lobby server (a free Cloudflare setup the host can add — see the setup guide). Without it, hosting and joining by code work exactly as before.

Where everyone starts

Players spawn in the corners, as far from the hole as possible, each in their own color.

FFA · 2 players
FFA · 3 players
FFA · 4 players
Team · blue vs red

In team play, the left side is blue (a regular blue and a lighter sky blue) and the right side is red (a regular red and a softer rose). Player names are listed along the edges of the screen so you always know who's who.

Spot yourself: during the 3-2-1 countdown, a white ring flashes around your ship on each number — that's how you tell which one you're controlling before the action starts.
No stalling

Sudden death

Nobody can hide in the corners forever. The host can arm a timer — 30 seconds, 1, 1.5, or 2 minutes — after which the round snaps straight into sudden death. The instant it triggers, a flashing banner counts down 3 seconds silently — no alarm yet, just the pulsing text so you know it's coming. When the count hits zero, the alarm kicks in and the hole immediately begins growing fast — the safe space collapses quickly until someone gets squeezed in. The flashing and alarm run for the whole squeeze, so the moment you see and hear it, grab the outer edge and line up a finishing shove.

Bots-only finish: in a practice or online game, the moment the last human is knocked out and only bots remain, sudden death fires automatically — so a round never drags on once you're spectating. In this bots-only case the hole collapses about three times faster still, wrapping things up fast. It runs even if the host left the sudden-death timer switched off.
How to win

Strategy that works

Put the hole behind your target

A pulse pushes rivals directly away from you. Line yourself up so that "away from you" means "toward the hole." Approach from the far side and shove inward.

Respect your own momentum

The most common way to lose is chasing a kill straight into the capture zone. Start your escape burn early — by the time you feel the pull, it may already be too late.

Get close before you pulse

The pulse is dramatically stronger up close. A point-blank shove can fling someone across the capture line; the same pulse from across the arena does almost nothing. Don't waste it at range.

Mini-gun: pressure and reach

The mini-gun's strength is control, not one big hit. Walk a sustained stream into a rival to nudge them toward the edge from a safe distance — and lead your fire, since bullets curve. Just remember a rival's pulse can swat your shots aside.

Use bombs as fences

Drop a bomb between a rival and open space, then herd them into it — or leave one near the hole's edge so any ship shoved that way gets a second push inward.

In a crowd, let others collide

With 3 or 4 players, hang back at the edge of a scrum. Bodies bouncing off each other near the hole do your work for you — swoop in only to land the finishing pulse.

Mind the blast radius

Bombs throw everyone, you included. Detonate from outside the blast, and never pulse a bomb you're hugging.

Reading the screen

What the rings mean

A quick reference for everything glowing on the field:

Ring filling around your ship

Your weapon recharge. Full + glowing = armed — ready to pulse, fire the mini-gun, or drop a bomb.

Red dashed ring around the hole

The capture line. Cross it and gravity owns you.

Short red dashes around a ship

Danger warning — that ship is inside the capture zone right now.

Yellow countdown ring

A live bomb's fuse, ticking down from 30 seconds.

Expanding bright ring

A pulse firing — the shove happens as it expands.

Names along the edges

Each player, colored to match their ship, with their current round-win count next to their name. In Team mode, teammates share a side.

Prefer a brighter screen? Open Settings (⚙️) and choose Dark or Light — it switches the background instantly and works the same on desktop and mobile. The gear sits in the top corner on the menus and in the lobby; it tucks away while a match is in progress so it never covers the action. Right next to it (on desktop) is a full-screen button — click it to fill the screen; a small “press Esc to exit” note flashes briefly and then fades. Like the gear, it's there in the menus and lobby and hidden during play. Both themes are tuned so ships and rings stay readable in either mode. The same panel has separate Music and Sound effects switches, so you can silence the soundtrack, the effects, or both. The game has a full sound layer now — weapon fire, bomb blasts, a countdown with a FIGHT!, a sudden-death alarm, lobby chimes, a menu track and a random gameplay track pulled from a playlist, and two different match-over fanfares — a triumphant one if you won (first place in free-for-all, or on the winning team) and a different one if you didn't. It's mixed so you clearly hear the things that matter to you (your own shots, your charge-ups) plus the big shared moments like explosions and eliminations.

Environmental hazard

Meteors

The host can turn on meteors before the match starts. When active, small space rocks periodically sweep across the arena in waves — a volley of rocks pours in from a random corner, announced by an incoming "whoosh" as they enter. A direct hit won't destroy your ship outright, but the impact is enough to knock you off course — and if you're already drifting near the capture ring, that nudge can be fatal.

Tip: Meteors play no favorites. A well-timed rock can finish off a rival who's already in danger just as easily as it can send you into the hole. When meteors are on, never drift passively — keep moving. And here's a new trick: your weapons now knock meteors around — a pulse, a bomb blast, or a burst of mini-gun fire will shove an incoming rock off its path (they're heavy, so it takes a solid hit), which you can use to bat a meteor away from yourself or nudge one toward a rival.