// GAME GUIDE //

Blob Volley

Free 2 player volleyball game · online vs a friend or solo vs the AI · no download

Blob Volley is a free 2 player volleyball game you play online in your browser: two blobs, one ball, one net, first to fifteen. Not Blobby Volley and not Volley Blob; this one is our own, under a megabyte, playable against a friend across the net online or against the AI, with no download and no account.

What is Blob Volley?

Blob Volley is one on one volleyball played by two round blobs. You each own half of an 800 by 500 court, split by a net neither blob can cross. Move left, move right, jump. That is the whole input set, which is why it teaches itself in ten seconds and still gives you something to be bad at an hour later.

The rules are volleyball with the paperwork removed. The ball may touch your side three times before it has to go back over; a fourth touch hands the point to your opponent, and so does letting it hit the sand on your half. The serve alternates after every point, so nobody sits on a rhythm.

A match is first to 15 with a two-point lead. Your first three solo matches are shortened to first to 7 on purpose: a full one runs three to six minutes, and a new player deserves to see a final score before deciding whether to stay. Online matches are never shortened.

How to play

• Read the arc: gravity is constant, so the landing spot is decided the moment the ball leaves a blob. Move there instead of following it.
• Count to three: three touches per side, and the fourth is a gift to the other blob. A set to yourself is legal, though the ball ignores you for 11 frames after a hit.
• Aim with your body: the rebound leaves along a straight line from your center out through the ball. Head to send it up, shoulder to send it sideways.
• Use the serve: the ball starts still and in the air on the serving side, so the first touch of every rally is a free swing.

Controls

On a keyboard: A or the left arrow moves left, D or the right arrow moves right, and W, the up arrow or the space bar jumps.

On touch: three round buttons sit along the bottom, left and right under one thumb, a bigger jump button under the other. They appear in landscape only; portrait hides the court and asks you to turn the phone, since a narrow strip hides the arc of the ball.

Tips from the developers

• Your hit speed is fixed. Every rebound leaves at the same 10.92 units per frame no matter how hard the ball arrived. You cannot hit harder, only differently, so angle is always the answer.
• Hold jump to jump higher. Gravity on a rising blob is halved while jump is held, 0.22 instead of 0.44. A tap is a short hop, a held press a full leap: tap to recover near the net, hold to meet a high ball.
• You are two circles, not one. The head is a radius 25 circle 19 above your center, the body a radius 33 circle 13 below. They throw the ball off at very different angles, and the wide body keeps low balls alive.
• The net post is a bumper. Its rounded top returns 85 percent of the speed that hits it, so a clipped ball drops almost vertically. Cheapest surprise in the game.
• Pick the bot that matches you. Easy waits 25 frames before it re-aims, misjudges the landing spot by up to 60 units and moves at 45 percent of your speed. Medium is 12 frames and 30 units, hard 4 and 10, impossible zero and zero at full speed. All four run the real ball physics 300 frames ahead, so lobs fool nobody.

Under the hood

Blob Volley runs one physics tick every sixtieth of a second, and an online match runs that tick on both machines instead of sending positions over the wire. An input packet is 8 bytes: a 24-bit frame number and four input bytes, the current frame plus the three before it repeated, so a dropped packet usually repairs itself before anyone notices.

The game never waits for your opponent's input: it assumes they held whatever they held last and simulates forward, and when the real input arrives and disagrees it rewinds to the last agreed frame and replays the difference, up to 20 frames back. Two frames of deliberate input delay absorb most of that first. Peers connect directly where the network allows it, and if that channel has not opened 15 seconds in, the game switches to a relay and plays on. The whole thing is 23 files and 682 KB unpacked, with no sprite sheets and no audio files: blobs, balls and arenas are canvas gradients, and every sound comes out of an oscillator. If you want the wider version of that story, including what happens between the click and the first serve, read From click to live match in seconds.

FAQ

Is Blob Volley free? Yes. It runs in your browser on BlitzBrawl, there is nothing to install, and there is no payment of any kind.

Can I play against a friend? Yes. A private match gives you a four-character lobby code to pass on; your friend types it in and you are both on the court. Quick match is the other route: it searches within 200 rating points of you, then widens to 500, 1000 and finally anyone.

How do I win a rally? Land the ball on the floor of your opponent's half, or make them take a fourth touch. Those are the only two ways a point is scored, and the serve changes sides after every one.

Do I need an account? No. Solo and online both work as a guest, and an anonymous device account keeps your settings and record on that device. Add an email address and confirm it with a 6-digit code to carry that identity across devices and open the friends list and the global leaderboard. There is no password.

How big is the download? There is nothing to download. The game is a web page: 23 files and 682 KB unpacked, of which a first visit pulls about 148 KB compressed.