How to Play

Hitting people is the game

Bent Bumper is a free party game that runs entirely in the browser — nothing to install. A laptop or TV shows the yard, cut into one window per phone; everyone drives with their phone by tilting it, and the AI fills the rest of the grid so it is a race even with one phone.

Drive into whoever is in front of you. Metal bends where you hit it, and a bent car drives worse. Hit with your nose and you pay half; take it in the side and you pay full. Enough damage and your car is a write-off that stays on the ground for everyone else to hit.

Tilt, and nothing else

Hold the phone sideways like a steering wheel. Turn it left or right to steer. Tip the top of the phone forward for the gas — further forward is faster. Lean it back to brake, and keep leaning to reverse. The way you hold it at rest is coasting — tap CALIBRATE holding it that way. No buttons for driving: the pad on the screen only shows which way you are pushing.

Calibrate before you drive. The gas is a held angle, so a phone zeroed at the wrong tilt sits at part-throttle all race. Hold it the way you will hold it to drive, then tap CALIBRATE.

Flipped, wedged, or forty metres from anywhere? Sit still: the yard puts you back on the road in a few seconds, facing the right way.

A race and a derby, on the same dirt

RACE Three laps of The Sandpit

A figure-8 in the dirt with a tabletop jump, a washboard, a mud hole and two sandpits. Ten gates make a lap and they must be taken in order: the ground is drivable everywhere and every shortcut is legal, but a shortcut that skips a gate earns nothing. Off the road the grass is slower and the rocks, pines and the ditch are exactly as solid as they look. The race ends when every phone is home, fifteen seconds after the first car home, or at the lap cap.

DERBY The big sandpit, and a ring that closes

Everyone starts in the pit. A ring of light lies on the floor and closes over two minutes; outside it your engine cooks — first it loses power, then it dies. Last car still driving wins. Points are the damage you deal, and they count on the board whichever mode you play.

Every window says what broke

The little car in the corner of your window is yours: four panels round the outside, and behind them the parts that matter. Green is fine, amber is bent, red is gone.

• Radiator (behind the nose) — holed, your engine heats up and fades. Watch for HOT.
• Engine — bent, you lose power; dead, you are a write-off.
• Gearbox (behind the tail) — bent, you lose power and reverse; dead, you are a write-off.
• Steering — bent, the wheel gives you less lock.
• Wheels — a bent wheel grips less and drags, so the car pulls to that side. Lose two and you are a write-off.

The name of the part that just broke flashes at the top of your window, and your phone buzzes with it.

Three buttons, thirteen ways to ruin someone's lap

With WEAPONS: ON in the lobby, three round buttons appear on the phone: GUN under the right thumb (hold it), SPECIAL above it and DEFENCE under the left thumb (tap). Each shows what it holds and how much. Driving is still tilt; the buttons never steer.

Everyone starts with the gun, one special and one defence. Glowing rings light up on the track and in the pit — drive through one to take what its icon shows. The last cars get the better rings.

• 🔫 Gun — twenty rounds a second, short range, chips the panel it hits. Sixty rounds a ring.
• 🚀 Rocket — homes a little, blows on the first thing it meets, throws cars and tyres.
• 🔥 Flame — hold it: a cone that cooks the radiator of whoever is in it, and lights oil.
• 🛢 Oil · 💣 Mine · 🔩 Spikes · 💨 Smoke — dropped behind you: no grip, a blast, bent front wheels, a cloud nobody can see through.
• 🌀 Pulse — two seconds of no engine and no wheel for everyone near you. 📡 Jammer — three seconds of reversed steering for the nearest rival. 🪝 Hook — a chain to the car ahead; the physics does the rest.
• 🛡 Shield — six seconds that take the hits. ⚡ Nitro — three seconds flat out. 🔧 Repair — a quarter back on your worst part, the only heal in the game.

Weapons damage the same panels and parts a bumper does, with the same rules for going out. Nothing kills in one shot. Points for damage by weapon count like damage by bumper.

Any laptop, any TV

The yard runs on real physics and real light, and it watches its own frame rate: if the screen falls behind, it turns the picture down a notch and turns it back up when it can. On a laptop that runs warm, tap COOL MODE in the lobby — thirty frames a second, no shadows, remembered for next time. A full HD screen and a browser that is not also running twelve tabs of video is all it needs.

Small print, big font

Never on a screen in a moving vehicle, and never while driving a real car. Play safely: sofas are for tilting phones, roads are not. Everything you hear is made by the browser; nothing is downloaded to your phone.