Drunken Boxing

Drunken Boxing is what happens when you take a two-player boxing game and replace the fighters' balance with a physics engine. Two puppet-like boxers, one blue and one orange, stagger around a small ring throwing haymakers they can barely control. A clean hit knocks the other boxer flat, the round ends, and the first to five knockdowns wins. It takes ten seconds to understand and much longer to master, which is exactly why it has been a staple of "2 player games" pages since 2016.

The twist that makes it a real game rather than a button-masher is the energy bar. Every punch drains a slice of it. Swing wildly and the bar empties, your boxer sags like a marionette with cut strings, and your opponent gets a free shot. Time your punches, back off to recover, and land the counter when the other boxer is gassed — that is the whole strategy, and against a human it turns into a genuine mind game.

Drunken Boxing is published by RHM Interactive OÜ, the Tallinn company that has run twoplayergames.org since 2008 and owns the Random series, and that is as far as the evidence goes. The Construct 3 project inside the build names no studio at all: its declared author is a bare first name, stefano — the same name on the publisher's own port of Get on Top — and the package id is Construct's untouched default. Elsewhere on this shelf the file is far more talkative and it points somewhere else entirely: Drunken Duel and Drunken Table Wars both carry HiHoy Games' own package id. The Drunken line is a publisher's imprint built by more than one pair of hands, so we would rather say we do not know who assembled this one than repeat the guess every other portal repeats. What is not in doubt is its record: released in July 2016, updated in March 2023, and still one of the most played physics boxing games on the web, holding an 8.6 rating on CrazyGames over the last six months.

Two-player boxing on one keyboard

The reason people search for Drunken Boxing as a 2 player boxing game is that it was designed for a shared keyboard first. Player 1 lives on the arrow keys, Player 2 on W, A, S, D, and the ring is split in blue and orange so nobody argues about who is who. Rounds last a few seconds, so a full match to five takes two or three minutes — short enough to play best-of-three during a break. On a tablet the screen splits in half and each player taps their side, which works surprisingly well for kids.

Drunken Boxing vs Drunken Boxing 2

Drunken Boxing 2 is the sequel, and its Unity build does name a company: RHM Interactive. The rules are identical — first to five, energy bar, arrows versus WASD — but the boxers and the ring are rebuilt with renewed 3D graphics, animations and hit effects, so punches look and feel heavier. The original is the lighter build: it loads faster and runs smoothly on old laptops and Chromebooks. If you play on a modern machine, try the sequel; if you want the classic feel or a quicker load, stay with this one.

Is drunken boxing a real fighting style?

The name comes from zui quan, the Chinese "drunken fist" style, and the game's swaying boxers are a joke on it. Real drunken boxing is a serious family of kung fu forms — found in both Shaolin and Taoist lineages, including the famous Eight Drunken Immortals sets — in which the practitioner sways, stumbles and falls to hide strikes, grabs and throws. It is not about being drunk, and it was not invented by Jackie Chan: his films Drunken Master (1978) and Drunken Master II (1994) simply made it world-famous. Nothing in this game will teach you zui quan, but now you know why the boxers wobble.

Play Drunken Boxing unblocked

The reason to open this one on a school machine is arithmetic. The whole build is 238 files and 8.9 MB — 140 images and 78 sounds — but Construct asks for them as the layouts need them, so the part that must arrive before you can press 1P is 567 KB. Its own sequel, rebuilt in Unity, downloads 27.7 MB before it will show a title screen and then holds around 49 MB in memory. On a four-gigabyte Chromebook that is the difference between a game and a slideshow, and it is why Drunken Boxing unblocked keeps pointing at this 2016 build rather than the prettier one.

The keyboard is the honest catch. This is the only game on the shelf that wants eight keys live at once: the four arrows for one player, W A S D for the other. Cheap membrane keyboards guarantee only a few simultaneous presses, and particular combinations block each other without saying so. If your punch simply does not come out while the other player is holding two keys, the keyboard swallowed it. Plugging in a different one is the entire fix, and it is a real fix rather than a superstition.

As for the filter, there is less to it than people assume. Nothing is written to the machine, nothing asks for admin rights, and the build's own page does not even load an advertising script. Closing the tab is the whole uninstall. Filters match addresses, so the page loading is the permission.

If the address is refused, the two answers that get nobody in trouble are asking a teacher to allow it and playing at home, where it is the same free page.

More games published by RHM Interactive

If you like the physics chaos, the rest of the Drunken shelf is Drunken Boxing 2, Drunken Spin Punch, Drunken Tug War and Drunken Slap Wars. Two more carry the same series name but were built by HiHoy Games and only published here: the one-button gunfights Drunken Duel and Drunken Duel 2, and the rope-free tug of Drunken Table Wars. For sports on RHM's own randomised physics engine try Boxing Random, Basket Random, Soccer Random and Volley Random. More two-player picks live in our multiplayer category.

1. Pick a mode. On the title screen press 1P to fight the computer or 2P to share the keyboard with a friend.
2. Learn the four keys. Left and right arrows throw punches with the matching glove and tilt your boxer that way. Up drives you forward. Down crouches and covers. Player 2 mirrors this with A, D, W and S.
3. Watch the energy bar. The blue and orange bars at the top of the screen are the real health bars. Punches drain them; standing still refills them.
4. Score a knockdown. Put the other boxer on the canvas and the screen shouts "LEFT SCORES" or "RIGHT SCORES", a star lights up on your side, and the round counter ticks up.
5. Reach five. Five stars ends the match. Confetti, then a rematch.

Tips from playing it:

• Punch in threes, not in tens. Three quick punches usually cost about a third of the bar. Throw them, step back with the opposite arrow, and let the bar refill before you go again. A boxer with an empty bar loses almost every exchange.
• Dodging is a stagger. There is no dedicated dodge key; pressing away from the opponent makes your boxer lurch back, and against the CPU that is often enough to make its punch whiff. Learn the timing and you can counterpunch a tired opponent with a single hit.
• Use the ropes. A boxer pushed onto the ropes can't stagger backwards, so his punches fall short. If you get cornered, crouch (down) until your bar refills rather than swinging your way out.
• The CPU has a tell. It tends to punch as soon as it is in range, so it empties its own energy quickly. Wait it out, then land your counter.
• In 2 Player, ban the double-tap. Mashing left and right alternately looks strong but drains the bar in seconds; the player who rests wins.