OpenArena — a 90s shooter in your browser
Remember the golden age of deathmatch shooters? When Quake 3 Arena set the standard for the genre and the word "esports" was just appearing on the horizon? OpenArena is a free open-source reincarnation of that era. And now it runs directly in your browser.
What is OpenArena?
OpenArena is a completely free first-person shooter created by the community as a spiritual successor to Quake 3 Arena. It uses the ioquake3 engine, a fork of the original id Tech 3, and is distributed under the GPL license.
What does this mean in practice? Absolutely all graphics, sounds, music, and source code are available for free. No purchases, no donations, no in-game ads — just old-school FPS gaming.
The first 3D game on igrasu.ru
Until now, the platform only featured 2D games — puzzles, arcades, platformers. OpenArena is the first game with full 3D graphics and a three-dimensional environment.
How is this technically possible? The entire engine is compiled into WebAssembly — a binary format that modern browsers execute at near-native speed. Graphics are rendered through WebGL — the same API used by many modern web applications. If Google Maps or Figma ever worked for you, you've already encountered WebAssembly.
Play with bots — no servers needed
OpenArena on igrasu.ru launches immediately in deathmatch mode with bots. You don't need to find a server, wait for a connection, or configure anything. Just open the game page and you're already in battle.
The engine automatically loads the oasago2 map — a classic arena with good balance. Two bots join you, ready for battle right now.
Controls familiar to anyone who's played PC shooters:
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Move | WASD |
| Aim | Mouse |
| Shoot | LMB |
| Jump | Space |
| Switch weapon | Tab / mouse wheel |
| Menu | ESC |
| Reload | R |
How it works under the hood
Emscripten takes the C source code of ioquake3 (over 150,000 lines) and compiles it into WebAssembly. The resulting WASM file is about 2 MB. Game resources (models, textures, maps, sounds) are loaded separately, so the first launch may take some time to download.
The trick is that the engine knows nothing about the browser — it just runs like a native program, and Emscripten provides the layer between C code and browser APIs. Canvas for graphics, WebGL for 3D, Virtual File System for assets — all without a single line of JavaScript in the game logic.
Why this matters
OpenArena is more than just a game. It's an example of how:
- Classic games get a second life through web technologies
- Open-source projects remain accessible for decades
- Modern browsers have become powerful enough to run full 3D games
Give it a try — you might discover an era where only reflexes and accuracy mattered.