Mozilla Launches BrowserQuest To Demonstrate HTML5 Gaming

If World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic doesn't float your boat, what about a retro 2D adventure game? Mozilla has teamed up with design studio The Little Workshop to launch BrowserQuest, a browser based multiplayer game. The game is built on HTML5 and JavaScript standards, and an experimental version will even run on iOS devices.

The game engine relies heavily on HTML5 as opposed to optional plugins, like Flash. The HTML5 Canvas element is used to provide the 2D landscape, and HTML5 audio APIs are used for music and sound effects.

Online and multiplayer support is achieved thanks to WebSockets, which provides connectivity to the servers. Player progress isn't saved server side, though, instead making use of the localStorage function to save data.

We've tried logging on to the BrowserQuest server several times since we first saw this story hit the internet, although we've been met with slow loading pages and the dreaded "Connecting to server..." message. Apparently the servers were handling around 1,900 simultaneous yesterday evening, but the influx of people trying to connect after the story hit the news probably isn't helping. For now, check out the video below to get a better idea of the gameplay and more detailed technical explanation of the game.

[via Ars Technica]