WebWars (Hedgewars in the browser)

Verdict: WebWars, the fan-made browser port of Hedgewars, was down when we checked on 2026-10-17. The address webwars.link answers with a security certificate for a different website (Chrome shows ERR_TLS_CERT_ALTNAME_INVALID), and plain http returns an error from an unrelated server. When it worked it needed no game files and no install. There is no official browser version, so until WebWars returns, the way to play is the free desktop game from hedgewars.org.

What Hedgewars is

Hedgewars is a free, open-source turn-based artillery game in the style of Worms: teams of pink hedgehogs take turns on destructible 2D maps, firing bazookas, grenades, air strikes and stranger weapons at each other. It was started by Andrey Korotaev (unC0Rr) in 2004 and is developed by volunteers. The code is under the GPL version 2 and the graphics and sounds under the GNU FDL 1.2, so the whole game is free to share and modify. Official builds exist for Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD and iOS.

What WebWars was

The GitHub user apmlabs announced WebWars on the Hedgewars forum on 22 February 2026. The Hedgewars engine is written in Pascal, which cannot be compiled to WebAssembly directly, so the port used the project’s own Pascal-to-C translator, pas2c, and then Emscripten. According to the README it offered:

• Hotseat: two teams sharing one keyboard.
• Custom games with a choice of 30 themes, game styles such as Shoppa, King and Racer, schemes and weapon sets.
• Online rooms: a lobby where players create or join a room. Games ran on the official Hedgewars server through a WebSocket gateway, so cross-play with desktop players was possible in principle; the author said it was untested.
• A small first download, about 7 MB, with themes and music fetched on demand.

The author also listed limits in February: multiplayer was still buggy, Safari did not work and there were no touch controls.

Why it is down

On 2026-10-17 the HTTPS address presented a certificate for an unrelated domain, and the http address returned a “DisallowedHost” error from a different web application. Public certificate logs show the last certificate issued for webwars.link expired on 20 September 2026. That pattern usually means the server the domain points to has changed. The source code on GitHub was last updated on 23 September 2026. We will check again and update the status if the site comes back.

Is it safe and legal?

• Hedgewars is open source, so a browser port is allowed under its licences, and WebWars is GPL v2 as well.
• WebWars is a fan project, not run by the Hedgewars team.
• While the certificate is wrong, do not click through the browser warning: you would be talking to a server that is not WebWars.

What to play instead

• The official Hedgewars desktop game, free from hedgewars.org, with online play built in.
• If you want something that runs in a browser today, the shooters on this site such as Quake III Arena, Urban Terror or QuakeWorld load without your own files.

Unofficial. This page is written by an independent directory. It is not made by, endorsed by or affiliated with Hedgewars Project (Andrey Korotaev and contributors) or apmlabs ("idealist" on the Hedgewars forum) (WebWars (Hedgewars in the browser)'s author). We do not host any files, and we never link to game files, ROMs or ISOs.