free artillery games online
Free Artillery Games Online: 8 to Play Right Now
The best free artillery games online: real-time browser picks, turn-based classics, and the dead Flash ones to skip. Honest list with platforms and prices.
Free Artillery Games Online: 8 You Can Play Right Now
Artillery games — the angle-power-fire genre where you lob a shot over a hill and watch it land — have a free-online problem: the deepest ones cost money, and the great free ones from the Flash era are dead. So here's the honest map. The genuinely free, play-in-your-browser-now picks come first, then the classics, then the paid depth, with prices and platforms on every entry so you don't waste a click.
The short answer
For free and instant in your browser: TANKBLAST and Rocket Bot Royale. For free turn-based in the classic style: Pocket Tanks. The famous free Flash artillery games (ShellShock Live 1 and 2) are gone with Flash. The genre's deepest games — ShellShock Live, Worms — are worth it but paid.
What counts as an "artillery game"
The trajectory. An artillery game is the one where aiming is a guessing game your brain learns to feel: set an angle, set a power, account for the arc, and walk your shots onto a target you often can't reach directly. That's the through-line from Scorched Earth in 1991 to ShellShock Live today. It's a different feeling than driving-and-shooting action tank games — here, the arc is the whole sport.
1. TANKBLAST — free, browser, real-time
Free · any browser, no download or account
The recoil itself is the twist. Every shot's kickback also moves your tank, so the trajectory you're reading is the same one that launches and repositions you — aiming, jumping, and driving collapse into one action. It's real-time rather than turn-based, runs instantly in any browser, and you can start a friend in a private party with a 4-letter code. If "free artillery game online" is the literal search, this is the literal answer.
2. Rocket Bot Royale — free, browser, battle royale
Free · CrazyGames (browser), also on app stores
The closest cousin to TANKBLAST and the game that popularized recoil-jump tank combat. Same free, browser, real-time pitch, wrapped in a sinking-island battle royale. Cross-platform pool plus bots means instant matches. If you want more of the recoil-physics feel, here's how the two compare and what else is in the genre.
3. Pocket Tanks — the turn-based purist's free pick
Free (45 weapons) + $4.99 Deluxe · iOS, Android, PC, Mac
If turn-based is the non-negotiable part — angle, power, fire, hand over the device — BlitWise's Pocket Tanks is the purest classic artillery experience still maintained. The free version ships 45 weapons; Deluxe adds 100 more for $4.99. No grind, no ranked ladder, just clean 1v1 trajectory duels. It's the spiritual heir to Scorched Earth, and the free tier is genuinely enough.
4. Tank Stars — free, mobile, quick
Free (ad-supported) · iOS, Android
Turn-based tank artillery distilled to a phone screen. Aiming is simpler than the genre's deep cuts, matches are fast, and the weapons are satisfyingly over-the-top. The catch is the ads, in the usual mobile free-to-play way. Good for a bus ride, not a Friday-night session.
5. Scorched Earth and its descendants — the 1991 origin
Varies · DOS original free via abandonware; remakes on Steam/mobile
The genre's source code. Scorched Earth (1991) is where the whole formula was born, and it's free to dig up through abandonware sites. If you want the lineage without the DOS friction, modern remakes and clones carry the torch on Steam and mobile. More a museum visit than a nightly habit — but every game on this list owes it.
6. The dead Flash ones — free, but gone
Free · Flash (no longer reliably playable)
Here's where nostalgia meets reality. ShellShock Live 1 and 2 were free Flash artillery games that a generation grew up on, still linked from the official site. But Adobe killed Flash at the end of 2020, and these don't reliably load anymore. The full story on ShellShock Live 2 is here — short version: it was real, it was great, and it's a museum piece now. Any site promising it "free, unblocked, no download" is filling that gap with something you don't want.
7. ShellShock Live (Steam) — paid, but the deepest
$9.99 Steam · $4.99 mobile
Not free — so it fails the headline — but it's the genre's modern gold standard, with 200+ weapons and a years-deep progression grind. If trajectory artillery is your main genre and you'll sink hours in, it's the buy. Full pricing and the free-version myths here.
8. Worms W.M.D — paid, big-budget chaos
Paid (heavily discounted on sales) · Steam, consoles
The genre's heavyweight: turn-based projectile warfare, fully destructible terrain, squads of worms, and a Saturday-morning-cartoon tone. Not free and not online-instant, but if you want production values the browser picks can't match, wishlist it and pounce on a sale. How it stacks up against the rest of the artillery field.
Which free one should you play?
- Free, instant, in a browser, with friends: TANKBLAST — party code, no install, real-time.
- Free battle royale spin on it: Rocket Bot Royale.
- Free turn-based, the classic feel: Pocket Tanks (free tier).
- Free on your phone for five minutes: Tank Stars (mind the ads).
- Willing to pay for the deepest: ShellShock Live.
If you came here to actually play something free in the next ten seconds rather than read a download page, open TANKBLAST and fire a shot — the arc-reading instinct the whole genre is built on is one click away, no purchase required.