The floor is lava

What this is

The Lava Game is a survival game played on a grid in your browser. Up to fifty players spawn on an island floating above molten rock. There is no combat, no gear and no health bar — the only thing trying to kill you is the ground you're standing on.

You get one move per day. Halfway through, the melt arrives and takes roughly a tenth of what's left of the island. If your tile is one of them, you go down with it. The floor keeps shrinking until one player remains, which usually takes between five and twenty-five minutes.

The Rim and arenas

These are two different places, and telling them apart is the thing new players most often get wrong.

If you're wandering an island and nothing seems to be happening, you're on the Rim. Press Play to pick an arena and queue up.

Your first match

Choose a name and character on the Rim, then press Play and take the Free arena — it costs nothing and the rules are identical to Elite. You'll wait in a queue until enough players have joined, then spawn at a random spot on the island.

Move straight away. Standing still for a whole day kills you just as surely as the lava does, and forgetting to move is what gets most people on day one. After that, watch the melt timer in the HUD.

The day

Every day runs the same shape.

Moving

Click a tile to walk there. You can reach anything within eight tiles, and the highlighted area shows exactly how far that is. You only get one move per day — once you've taken it you're committed until tomorrow, so there's no walking it back.

Movement locks while the melt is happening. You can't dodge out of the way once tiles start dropping; wherever you were standing is where you'll be judged.

The melt

Halfway through each day part of the island falls away. Tiles are picked at random across the whole map, so no corner is safer than any other — there are only better and worse odds.

What's gone stays gone. Melted tiles sink and glow, and you can't step back onto them. Because the same proportion goes each time, a smaller island loses ground faster and faster as the match runs on.

Dying

There are exactly two ways out.

Players can't hurt each other. There's no pushing anyone into the lava, however tempting it looks.

Winning

The last player standing wins. In a paid arena that's ninety percent of the pot, with ten percent to the house. The pot is the entry fee multiplied by the number of players, so ten players at 0.1 each makes a pot of 1.0 and the winner walks away with 0.9.

Free arena

No wallet and no fee — just a name. It needs ten players to start and holds up to fifty, and the rules are identical to Elite: same map, same melt, same timings.

There's no pot, so winning is for glory plus eligibility for prizes during official tournaments. Those only exist while a tournament is actually running, and there may not be one right now. If you'd like to be reachable in case you win one, add a wallet address and X handle when you join — or leave both blank and play purely for the win.

Elite arena

Needs a connected wallet and an entry fee, and runs with three to fifty players. The winner takes ninety percent of the pot, paid out automatically once the match ends.

Use a burner wallet rather than the one holding everything you own. That's sensible practice for any game, ours included.

Draws and refunds

If the last players alive are all eliminated in the same melt, the match is a draw and the pot is split evenly between them after the house cut.

Entry fees come back automatically when a match never happens — either the queue didn't fill, or the server restarted mid-match, in which case surviving players are refunded. Losing is not one of those cases.

Controls

Characters

Sixteen to choose from on the Rim, and they're entirely cosmetic — every one moves the same distance and sinks the same way. Pick whichever you'd rather look at.

Chat

Press Enter to talk on the Rim. What you say appears above your character and fades, and is kept in the chat log in the corner so you can scroll back through anything you missed. Click its header to collapse it. Chat is Rim-only, and hides during a match.

Spectating

Once you're out you can stay and watch for sixty seconds, cycling between survivors with A and D. Leave early with Return to Lobby whenever you've seen enough.

Stats

Play with a connected wallet and your record is kept against it: games and wins, win rate, best and average placement, top-ten finishes, days survived, longest run, streaks, and how you've tended to die.

The record follows the wallet rather than the browser, so a different wallet means a fresh start. Free games played without one aren't recorded.

Surviving longer

Move first, think second. More players die to the clock than to the lava, usually while distracted by chat or deliberating over a perfect tile that doesn't exist.

Since tiles go at random, no square is safer than another — but some leave you with more options tomorrow. Sitting in the middle of a wide intact area beats hugging an edge, because what matters is how much you can still reach after the next melt, not where you are now.

Before committing, count your outs. A move that leaves you with one or two reachable tiles is a bad move even when it looks perfectly safe. And late on, with few players and little floor, keep away from other survivors — standing together just means competing for the same shrinking pocket.

Troubleshooting

Reloading fixes most visual glitches and desyncs. If your wallet won't connect, disconnect and reconnect it, then re-sign when prompted; if your balance doesn't appear, give it a few seconds and reload.

Getting disconnected mid-match isn't fatal. Your position and whether you've moved live on the server, not in your browser, so reconnecting puts you back where you left off as long as the match is still running.

The Lava Game needs a desktop browser with a keyboard and mouse, at least 1024px wide. Chrome, Firefox and Edge all work.

We will never ask for your seed phrase. The game only asks your wallet to sign a login message, or to approve an entry fee you started yourself. Anything else is someone trying to rob you.

Feedback

The Lava Game is in beta and we'd rather hear about a problem from you than find it ourselves six weeks later. Bugs, anything confusing, balance that feels wrong, features you wish existed — our DMs are open.

The most useful reports say what happened, what you expected instead, and roughly when. A screenshot is worth a paragraph. If something cost you a match or an entry fee, include your wallet address so we can look it up.

And if the game didn't explain itself somewhere, tell us that too — that one's our bug, not yours.

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