HOW TO PLAY
Ten arcade arenas, 48 players a round. Here's how to get in, the buttons, and how to win every one.
In a round in ten seconds.
- Open arena.joinr.space in Safari, Chrome, Edge or Firefox, on a phone, tablet or computer. Install it to your home screen and it runs full screen like an app.
- Type a name and press ENTER THE ARENA. No account, no email. Add a password to claim the name: a 🔒 on the leaderboards, and a 👤 PROFILE with your own photo (your avatar everywhere, and your driver's face in RING ROAD).
- Pick an arena in the hub. Every card shows who's in its lobby, who's playing, the time left and the top score.
- Press READY. A round starts when everyone's ready, or 20 seconds after the first READY. Bots fill every empty seat, so you can play alone, and you can jump into a round that's already going.
- Three minutes later everyone's back in the lobby together and the scores go up on the board. ◀ ARENAS (or B / Esc) takes you back to the hub.
🎧 Headphones on. Every arena is mixed with a deep bass end, and with headphones nobody hears the game echoing back through your mic in voice chat. Any wired or Bluetooth pair works; earbuds with a mic are perfect.
Friends who join an arena together sit side by side in the ring, so you're each other's neighbours (and on the same team in HACK & STASH). Forgot your password? Tap forgot your password? on the first screen and we'll email you a code.
One set of buttons, every arena.
| Controller | Keyboard | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Stick / D-pad | Arrows / WASD | Move (and move round the menus) |
| A | Enter / Space | Confirm, READY, and the arena's main action |
| B | Esc | Back to the arenas · in a round, Start (or Esc) opens the pause menu: resume, help, voice, controls, quit to the lobby |
| Y | V | Voice chat panel |
| LB | T | Push-to-talk (when you choose push-to-talk) |
| Start | H / Esc | In a round: the pause menu (resume, help, voice, controls, quit to the lobby) · in the lobby: the arena's help |
| Select / Back | M | Music on or off |
| Hold Select + ▲ / ▼ | Resize the phone controller area to fit your clip-on pad |
NO CONTROLLER?
On a phone the bottom of the screen becomes an on-screen gamepad that works everywhere a real one does, and most arenas also take touch on the game itself (see each arena below).
CONTROLS PANEL
Swap A/B for Nintendo-layout pads, the stick dead zone, vibration and the phone controller area. Clip-on pads: see the controller guide.
Talk while you play.
VOICE CHAT
🎧 Use headphones for voice: on the phone's speaker the game and other players echo back into your mic. Press Y (or V, or the 🎙 button) and turn voice on: your browser asks for the microphone and you're on open mic with everyone in the same room: the hub, or the arena you're in. Prefer push-to-talk? Switch to it in the same panel. You can turn down or mute anyone, and choose to hear everyone or only your neighbours in the ring. There is no text chat.
AMAZE ARENA
EAT · RAID · DESTROY
Eat every pellet on your maze while four ghosts hunt you. Up to 48 mazes are linked in a ring: the side tunnels lead into your neighbours' mazes, where their pellets are yours for the taking.
THE RULES
- Power pellets turn the ghosts blue for a while: eat them for big points.
- Weapons bounce around every maze. Run into one to pick it up; it's yours for 15 seconds. Fire with A (or X, RB, RT, LT, Space).
- Get caught and you're WASTED for a moment, then back in.
CONTROLS
- 🎮stick / D-pad / arrows to move (push the way you want to turn early and you take the next corner) · A fire · Start shows the weapons.
Raid through the side tunnels when your own maze runs thin: your neighbours' pellets score just the same.
INVADERS ARENA
48 LANES · ONE RING · NO MERCY
A ring of 48 lanes, one per player, each with its own invader formation marching down. Clear your formation before it reaches the red line at the bottom: if it lands, every ship in that lane is wrecked. You can fly into any lane.
THE RULES
- Score = invader points × chain (kills less than 1.2 s apart build up to ×5) × altitude (up to ×2 at the top of the band).
- PvP: your shots hit any ship above you, and theirs hit you. Flying high pays double but exposes you to everyone below. Shooting a ship down pays a 400-point bounty and drops what it carried.
- From wave 2, invaders peel off and dive. A UFO crosses every lane every 15 to 25 seconds and always drops a power-up.
- Ships have 3 hull points and respawn after 2.5 seconds.
CONTROLS
- 🎮stick / D-pad to fly · A, RT, X, RB or LT fire (hold)
- 📱phone: drag anywhere on the game to steer; you fire while your finger is down.
Fly high for up to ×2, but every ship below can hit you. Drop down when the bombs start raining.
METEORS ARENA
ROTATE · THRUST · HUNT THE LEADER
Your own galaxy of meteors, linked in a ring with everyone else's: fly off the left or right edge into your neighbour's (a shimmering warp seam marks the border). Top and bottom wrap round. Meteors split big → medium → small, and every galaxy has its own saucers: the big one sprays, the small one aims.
THE RULES
- Score: big meteor 20, medium 50, small 100, × your chain (up to ×5). Saucers pay 200 and 1000. The pilot who breaks the last meteor of a wave gets a bonus.
- Bounties: every shot hits any rival ship. Each ship carries a bounty (250, +125 for every kill in its streak, up to 1500) that its killer collects.
- Ships have 3 hull points (a big meteor takes 2) and respawn after 2.2 seconds.
CONTROLS
- 🎮left stick points the ship (push all the way to thrust) · D-pad ◀ ▶ rotate, ▲ thrust, ▼ hyperspace · A / RT fire · X hyperspace
- ⌨️keyboard ← → ↑ ↓ and Space
- 📱phone: touch to steer towards your finger (far away = thrust), a second finger jumps to hyperspace.
Big bounties are announced to everyone. Hunt the leader: their bounty grows with every kill they make.
ABDUCTION ARENA
DEFEND YOUR PLANET · SAVE THE HUMANS
Guard your planet, a wide strip of neon mountains with six humanoids walking on the ground. The planets are linked in a ring. Your ship thrusts left or right (it turns round at once while its momentum carries on), climbs and dives, and fires a long laser from its nose.
THE RULES
- Landers grab humanoids and carry them up. One that reaches the top becomes a mutant that hunts ships. Shoot the lander (150 + 250), catch the falling humanoid (500) and fly low to set it down (500, double on your home planet). Up to three can ride with you.
- A planet that loses every humanoid explodes and fills with mutants until the wave is over.
- Smart bombs (three a round) destroy everything near you. Hyperspace jumps you somewhere quiet. Fly through a Stargate to warp to the nearest planet where a humanoid is being taken.
- Later waves bring bombers, pods, swarmers and baiters. Lasers hit rival ships too, and every ship carries a bounty.
CONTROLS
- 🎮stick / D-pad fly · A, RT or LT fire · X smart bomb · RB hyperspace
- ⌨️keyboard arrows/WASD, Space, E, Q
- 📱phone: touch the game and your ship flies towards your finger, firing; a second finger drops a smart bomb.
Shoot the lander, catch the humanoid, fly low and set it down: 1,400 points, more on your home planet.
DIG IT ARENA
DIG · PUMP · POP
Every digger owns a field of dirt under a strip of sky, and the fields join in a ring: dig off the side of yours and you're in your neighbour's. You dig wherever you walk.
THE RULES
- The pump: your hose shoots along the tunnel in front of you and latches on. Hold to pump (mash to pump faster); four pumps pop a monster, for 200 near the top up to 500 at the bottom. A fire-breathing dragon popped from the side pays double.
- Monsters walk the tunnels and sometimes turn into ghostly eyes that drift through the dirt at you. Dragons breathe fire three cells sideways, straight through the dirt.
- Rocks: dig out the cell under one and it drops, squashing everything below: 1000 for one, 2500 for two, up to 15,000. Two rocks down and a bonus vegetable appears.
- Gems buried in the dirt are power-ups: turbo drill, long hose, turbo pump, hard hat and quake.
- The hose latches onto rival diggers too (five pumps pop one), and a rock you dropped on a rival pays double.
CONTROLS
- 🎮stick / D-pad / arrows dig · A, X, RB, RT or LT pump
- ⌨️keyboard Space / Shift / F pump · phone: drag and the digger heads for your finger, tap to pump that way.
Lure monsters under a rock, then dig it loose: two squashed at once pays 2,500.
HACK & STASH ARENA
12 TEAMS OF 4 · ONE DUNGEON
Up to 48 heroes in 12 teams of four. Your place in the team picks your hero: Warrior (axes, the toughest), Valkyrie (the best armour), Wizard (the strongest magic) or Elf (the fastest feet and arrows). Twelve team dungeons ring the map, joined by gates, with the Keep in the middle.
THE RULES
- Hack: hold shoot and you stand still and aim. Walk into monsters to fight hand to hand. Generators keep breeding ghosts, grunts, demons, lobbers and sorcerers: shoot them down. Death stalks the Keep, and only a potion stops it.
- Stash: chests, gold bags and the Keep's hoard give gold you carry. Walk onto your team's vault to stash it for points. Fall and your gold spills for anyone to grab. Keys open treasure rooms.
- Food: your health drains all the time; food brings it back. Don't shoot the food.
- Domination: stand on one of the Keep's four shrines with no rival there to claim it. Every shrine held adds points every second and makes every stash worth more. Slay the Dragon and its hoard spills. The top team gets 1000 for every hero.
CONTROLS
- 🎮stick / D-pad run (8 ways) · hold A, RB, RT or LT to shoot (the stick aims) · Xbox right stick aims and shoots while you run · X potion
- ⌨️keyboard arrows/WASD, Space, E
- 📱phone: drag to run, a second finger shoots that way, double-tap for a potion.
Stash early, stash often: fall with a pocket full of gold and it spills for anyone to grab.
BLOCK PARTY ARENA
48 WELLS · ONE BEAT · DROP IT
48 wells of falling blocks in a ring, with the modern rules you know: the 7-piece bag, wall kicks, hold, ghost piece, soft and hard drop, T-spins, back-to-backs and combos.
THE RULES
- Garbage goes round the ring. Doubles, triples, four-line clears, T-spins and combos send garbage lines to a neighbour: back at whoever hit you last, otherwise at the neighbour with the taller stack. Clearing lines cancels garbage on its way to you.
- On the beat: the music is a 128 BPM house track and your well's edge pulses on every beat. A clear that lands on the beat scores double and sends an extra line.
- Knockouts: top out and your well is wiped and you're straight back in. Whoever buried you takes your bounty.
- Party gems go off when you clear their row: bomb, shield, zap, party popper and slow-mo.
- The Drop: in the last minute every attack sends double.
CONTROLS
- 🎮D-pad ◀ ▶ move, ▼ soft drop, ▲ hard drop · A turn clockwise, X anticlockwise · RB / LT hold · RT hard drop
- ⌨️keyboard arrows, X / Z turn, Space hard drop, C hold
- 📱phone: drag sideways to move, drag down to drop, flick down to hard drop, tap to turn, two fingers to hold.
Watch your well's edge pulse: a clear on the beat scores double and sends an extra line.
RING ROAD ARENA
48 KARTS · ONE NEON CIRCUIT
A kart race for all 48 on one huge neon circuit. The throttle is always on: you steer, brake when you have to, drift the bends and fire items. Every driver's head is their profile picture.
THE RULES
- Points: 1000 for every lap's worth of road you cover (so you score from the moment you join), +150 for every hit you land with an item, +10 a coin. Your place is how far round you are against everyone else.
- Drift: hold drift through a bend. The kart slides wide and the sparks go blue, then orange; let go for a mini-turbo. Orange arrow pads on the road boost you too.
- Item boxes: drive through a rainbow ? box. The further back you are, the better the item: 🍌 PEEL (drop it behind you), 🟢 BOUNCER (fires ahead, bounces off the barriers), 🎯 SEEKER (locks on to the kart in front), 💣 BOMB (thrown ahead, blows up everyone near it), 🚀 TURBO and ⭐ OVERDRIVE (six seconds unstoppable: anyone you touch spins out).
- Coins: each one makes you a little faster, up to 10. Get hit and you drop three.
- The run-off beside the road slows you down; the neon barrier bounces you back.
CONTROLS
- 🎮stick / D-pad ◀ ▶ steer · ▼, X or LT brake · R / RB / RT drift · A fire your item
- ⌨️keyboard ← → steer, ↓ brake, Shift drift, Space item
- 📱phone: drag left and right to steer (hard over drifts), drag down to brake, tap with a second finger to fire.
Hold drift through every bend and let go when the sparks turn orange: that's the big mini-turbo.
ALIEN ARENA
FIRST PERSON · FFA, TEAMS, INVASION · GAMES OF 12
A first-person shooter in the spirit of the 90s corridor classics, aboard a dark hauler the Hive has got into. You are Sgt Sidney Weaver: she's in the dock at the bottom of the screen and takes every hit personally. Rounds rotate through three modes, and the Hive breaches from the vents in all of them.
THE RULES
- The playlist: FREE FOR ALL (3 minutes), TEAM DEATHMATCH (six a side, the company with the most kills wins and gets +500 each) and INVASION (six a side, 5 minutes, the Hive in force, three airlocks to hold: stand in one with no rival inside to take it; held airlocks score every second and you can redeploy at them). A game is up to twelve on the whole ship and never more than six bots.
- Points: 100 a kill, +25 for every kill in your streak, +50 for a multi-kill, +150 for taking an airlock. The Hive is worth points too: drones 25, lurkers 40, spitters 50, brutes 150, the Queen 1000.
- Health: 100, and armour soaks half of what hits you until it's gone. Medkits, ammo, armour and grenades lie about the decks and come back. Fall and you redeploy in three seconds.
- Ranks: half your score becomes XP (+100 for playing, +300 for a win). Twenty ranks unlock the pulse rifle, breacher shotgun, hornet SMG, smartgun, lance marksman and the incinerator, three grenades, perks and skins. Kills with a weapon level it. Claim your name with a password to keep your rank.
- The motion tracker top right shows whatever moves near you, forward up, and beeps faster as it closes.
CONTROLS
- 🎮twin-stick pads: left stick moves, right stick looks, A / RT / RB fire, X reload, Y swap, LT grenade. One-stick pads (FlipPad, Pocket Taco) and the on-screen pad: stick or D-pad moves, the ABXY diamond looks (Y left, A right, X up, B down; a tap nudges, a hold turns), R / RT fire, LT grenade, L reloads or swaps. Start pauses on every pad
- ⌨️click the game to lock the mouse: WASD, left button fires, R reload, G grenade, 1 / 2 or the wheel swap, Tab scoreboard
- 📱phone: the on-screen pad works the same way (D-pad moves, ABXY looks, R fires, L reloads), and you can drag the view to look; a second finger taps a grenade, double-tap swaps. Without the deck: a move stick on the left and FIRE / RLD / NADE / SWAP buttons bottom right.
Watch the tracker, not the door. When the beeps run together, something is already in the room with you.
QUADRIX ARENA
DRAW · FENCE · GRAB · 12 BOARDS OF 4
The arcade line-drawer with four markers on every board and twelve boards in a ring. Your marker runs the track: the board's edge and the edge of every bit of claimed land. Push off it into open space with the draw button held and you trail a line; touch the track again and everything the line cut off from the wisp is yours.
THE RULES
- Claims: 100 points for every 1% of the board your line fences off. Let go of the draw button while drawing to draw slowly: a slow fence pays double.
- The wisp roams the open space and burns any line it touches, but it can never cross land or a line: fence it into a corner and the rest of the board is yours. With two wisps, a line that splits them burns the one in the smaller half (+1500).
- Sparks run the track and burn any marker they meet on it. Stop while drawing and the fuse creeps along your line from its start.
- Rivals: run your line into a rival's unfinished line and you cut it (+500). Fence off the space a rival is drawing in and they're fenced in (+500). Rival land you seal off from the open space is taken: it counts for you.
- The ring: at 75% claimed a board clears (2000 / 1000 / 500 to its landholders), resets a level up with a faster wisp and more sparks, and its wisp crosses over to the next board. A slow claim of 8% or more sends a spark on too.
CONTROLS
- 🎮stick / D-pad run the track (it follows corners for you) · hold A, RT, RB, X or LT while pushing off the track to draw fast · let go of it to draw slowly
- ⌨️keyboard arrows / WASD, hold Space / Shift / F to draw fast (let go to draw slowly)
- 📱phone: swipe or drag to steer, tap to stop, hold a second finger to draw fast, or use the on-screen pad.
Draw slow when the wisp is on the far side, fast when it isn't, and never start a line next to a rival's.