Play Half-Life in Your Browser

The Half-Life series

Half-Life was Valve’s first game, released in 1998 and published by Sierra. You play Gordon Freeman, a scientist at the Black Mesa Research Facility, fighting your way out after an experiment goes wrong and opens a rift to an alien world. The story plays out in first person without cutscenes, which set a new standard for shooters.

Gearbox Software added two expansions, Opposing Force (1999) and Blue Shift (2001). Half-Life 2 arrived in 2004 on Valve’s Source engine, followed by Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007), and Half-Life: Alyx (2020) moved the series to VR. The original ran on GoldSrc, Valve’s heavily modified version of the Quake engine, which Counter-Strike 1.6 also uses.

The browser version listed here

One listing, Half-Life (Xash3D web port), covers two community builds, and both play right on our page:

• pixelsuft is the main host.
• WebXash is a second build of the same engine, listed as an alternative.

Xash3D is an independent, open-source engine written to be compatible with GoldSrc. It isn’t Valve’s code, but Half-Life’s maps, models and sounds still belong to Valve, so these builds are unofficial and marked as fan projects. Whether each build includes the game data or asks you to load files from your own copy isn’t listed yet. If one asks, use the files from a copy of Half-Life you own.

Single-player is what’s listed. Online play isn’t, and neither are touch controls or gamepad support.

Tips for playing Half-Life in a browser

• Use a desktop browser with a keyboard and mouse.
• Click inside the game to capture your mouse, and press Esc to release it.
• If one build won’t load on your device, try the other host on the same page.
• Look in the game’s own options menu for key bindings and mouse sensitivity.

Counter-Strike started life as a Half-Life mod, and its browser versions are on our Counter-Strike page. For the engine family Half-Life grew out of, see Quake in your browser.