Quake Shareware

Quake was an earthquake in 1996, and the name was the program. After Doom, which still worked with flat sprite enemies in a only apparently three-dimensional world, Quake was the first big shooter with a true 3D engine: fully polygonal enemies, free look up and down, real rooms stacked above and below each other. Gaming never looked the same again.

The atmosphere is unmistakable to this day. Dark castles, Lovecraftian creatures and blood-red rune symbols. The CD music by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails is not part of this browser version, the sound effects are. You fight through twisting levels full of secret passages, traps and monsters, collect weapons and hunt for the exit - classic id Software level design in its purest form.

The arsenal is cult: from the shotgun through the nailgun to the infamous rocket and lightning combo. So-called rocket jumping, where you catapult yourself upward with a rocket under your feet, was born in Quake and shapes shooters to this day. Fast, brutal, precise - Quake rewards reflexes and knowledge of the terrain.

You play with the classic mouse-and-keyboard combination. You move with WASD and aim with the mouse. Clicking into the game window captures the mouse so you can look around freely without the cursor running off. Press Escape to release the mouse again. This is exactly the control scheme that defined the modern shooter.

This version runs as a browser port of the Quake engine, which is licensed under the GPL-2.0. You play the shareware Episode 1 with its eight levels; Episodes 2 to 4 belong to the full version and are not included. Click Play, your browser loads about 20 MB, and you are in the game - no installation, no account. Just the classic, as raw and fast as it was in 1996. You need a keyboard and a mouse, there are no touch controls on phones.

A fullscreen mode blows the action up to the whole area when you want to dive right in. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is installed. The game keeps saves and settings in your browser storage. Remember: once the mouse is captured, press Escape to get your cursor back.