home › Frontline 3D
3D first-person shooter
Frontline
the base war, on foot · in the spirit of C&C Renegade
You are one of the soldiers. Walk your own base, buy a better gun or a tank at the purchase terminal, drive it across the field and flatten red — or slip inside one of their buildings and put a charge on the master control terminal. Every building you lose takes something off the menu.
No download. No account. No launcher. Mouse and keyboard, any modern browser.
If you played Renegade, you already know this
In 2002 Westwood made a first-person Command & Conquer. The single player was fine. The multiplayer — two bases, a purchase terminal, and a war you won by walking into the enemy’s buildings — was one of the best ideas the series ever had, and almost nobody has made it since.
Frontline is that idea, in a browser tab, on graph paper. If you know the first column of this table, you can already play.
| In Renegade | In Frontline |
|---|---|
| Purchase terminals in your base | Purchase terminals in your base — press E |
| Credits trickle in from the harvester | Credits come in when your harvester gets home, and for damage done |
| C4 on the Master Control Terminal | C4 on the master control terminal — G, then run |
| Power plant dies: defences drop, prices double | Power plant dies: defences go quiet, everything costs double |
| Lose the barracks, lose the good infantry | Lose a building, lose what it sold |
| Engineers repair and disarm | Engineers are free, repair buildings and tanks, and disarm C4 |
| Ion cannon and nuke beacons | A strike beacon (B) — twenty seconds, then nothing nearby |
| Havoc, one commando against an army | The campaign: one commando who arms himself off the men he puts down |
Longer version: what Renegade got right, and, if you want more of it, games like C&C Renegade.
A shooter that is secretly an RTS
The terminal is the tech tree
Riflemen and engineers are free. Rocket soldiers and commandos need the barracks; tanks need the factory. Kill their factory and the other side is on foot for the rest of the match.
Drive it yourself
Buy a tank and it rolls out onto the factory pad. Walk up, press E,
and it is yours: W/S to drive, the turret follows the mouse.
Buildings have insides
Every structure is a place you can walk into, with a master control terminal at the heart of it. Your C4 on that terminal brings the whole building down. Theirs on yours does the same.
An economy you can shoot
Your harvester drives the ore home on its own. Escort it, or go and kill theirs — it is the most expensive thing on the field that cannot shoot back.
A squad that plays properly
Your team and theirs buy, drive, repair, raid and plant charges by the same rules you do. Four, six or eight a side, three levels of aim.
Still a drawing
The ground is graph paper laid flat. Tanks are inked boxes, explosions are scribbles, and every sound is synthesised in the browser. It is the 2D game’s world, stood up.
At the purchase terminal
| Unit | Cost | Needs | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rifleman | free | — | a rifle and one charge |
| Engineer | free | — | repairs buildings and tanks, disarms C4 |
| Rocket Soldier | 225 | barracks | kills tanks, chews buildings |
| Commando | 1000 | barracks | one shot, one man; his C4 levels a building |
| Light Tank | 600 | factory | quick, cheap, a good shell |
| Heavy Tank | 900 | factory | the line |
| V2 Launcher | 1000 | factory | lobs a rocket over walls from very far away |
| Mammoth Tank | 1800 | factory | twin cannon, tusk missiles on the right mouse |
Prices double while your power plant is down.
The Margin Wars, from the inside
The same twelve missions as the 2D campaign, told from inside one of the soldiers. You start light and arm yourself off the men you put down.
- First Blood
- Hold the Line
- The Ore Road
- Break the Wire
- The Convoy
- Crossfire
- Thunder Line
- The Long Hour
- Two Fronts
- The Last Page
- Lights Out
- The Inside Page
Controls
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
WASD · mouse | move · look and shoot |
E | use a purchase terminal, get in or out of a tank |
G | stick C4 on whatever you are facing — the MCT is the one that counts |
Q · X | throw a sticky remote charge · set it off |
B | plant a strike beacon (campaign) |
shift · C · space | sprint · crouch · jump |
| right mouse | aim down the sights |
R · 1–9 · tab | reload · switch gun · scoreboard |
Questions people actually ask
Is this C&C Renegade?
No, and it is not affiliated with EA or the people who own Command & Conquer. Frontline is an original game that borrows the shape of Renegade’s multiplayer — two bases, a purchase terminal, credits from a harvester, buildings you walk into and a master control terminal you put C4 on — and draws it in marker on graph paper.
Can I play C&C Renegade in my browser?
Not the original — Renegade is a 2002 Windows game. The closest thing that runs in a browser tab, with no install, is this: the same base war, free, on a page. If you want Renegade itself, it is sold as part of EA’s Command & Conquer collection, and the fan-made Renegade X is a free download for Windows.
Is Frontline free?
Yes. No price, no account, no advertisements, nothing to unlock with money. The credits you spend at the purchase terminal are earned in the match.
What do I need to run it?
A browser with WebGL — any recent Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge — and a mouse and keyboard. It runs on an ordinary laptop; if yours struggles, the graphics option on the title screen drops the resolution automatically or on request.
Is there multiplayer?
Not yet. Skirmish puts you in a squad of four, six or eight a side against AI soldiers who buy, drive and plant charges by the same rules you do. Online play is the thing the tip jar is paying for.
How does it relate to the 2D game?
Same war, same armies, same Margin Wars campaign — told from inside one of the soldiers rather than from above. You do not need to have played one to play the other.
Read next
Games like C&C Renegade
Renegade X, the W3D Hub mods, and the FPS–RTS hybrids that kept the base war alive.
What Renegade got right
The C&C game everybody wrote off, and the multiplayer mode that outlived its studio.
TANKS, the 2D RTS
The same war from above: harvesters, a power grid and a sidebar build queue.
Their MCT is unguarded
Buy a tank at the terminal, drive it across the field and put a charge on the master control terminal. Free, in this tab, in about five seconds.
play Frontline free