Guardians of Atlas - a game by Artillery

This site serves as tribute to Artillery and its 3D, multiplayer RTS, Guardians of Atlas, which was developed from 2012-2016.

October 2026 Update: We used AI to get the game running again with a tiny game server! You can play online against other players or offline with the tutorial and bots. Enjoy!

Play on Web

Download for MacApple Silicon · Intel⚠ Unsigned

Download for Windows64-bit

⚠ Mac versions are unsigned. If the game doesn't open open, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

Note: Development stopped in 2016. This game is completely unsupported.

In 2012, a few of us noticed the fast rate of web browser development and saw the potential for HTML5. We decided that we could build a gaming platform in the browser and we pitched "Steam for the web." We built a 3D multiplayer air hockey demo which used WebGL and WebSockets, and the people we pitched it to were amazed that it wasn't Flash.

After closing a large seed round, we released Powderkeg on Facebook as a multiplayer, realtime Bomberman clone featuring the art of Adam deGrandis. After this, we decided to aim higher and build a new realtime multiplayer strategy game (RTS) -- a combination of the best parts of Dota, League of Legends, WarCraft III, and our beloved StarCraft, which would be playable on our own HTML5-based game engine that could be played on any browser.

We partnered with a gaming celebrity, raised another large round, spent a few years doing extensive playtesting and development, ported the engine and game to Mac and Windows, and eventually launched the game in September, 2016. At the height we employed 21 people, and our first announced playtest drew thousands of players. Despite this, the launch of the game was not successful, and for a multitude of reasons we decided to shut down the studio. I was unable to find an acquirer and I returned the remaining funds to investors.

Thank you to everyone involved that put in a truly herculean amount of effort, and thank you to everyone that supported and believed in us.

– Ian

Videos

Content

Discussions

Articles

2012Facebook IPO Could Spawn 1,000 Start-ups
2012Fire Power and Artillery
2012Artillery Raises $2.5M To Make the Browser The Console
2012Artillery aims to make web browsers into game consoles
2013HTML5 Gaming Startup Artillery Lures Starcraft Personality Sean "Day[9]" Plott Into Design Role
2013Artillery Teases Upcoming Game "Atlas," An HTML5-Based "Spiritual Successor To Starcraft"
2013Artillery shows HTML5 browser game platform
2013Gaming startup's HTML5 development platform brings triple-A games to browsers
2013The unlikely fusion of eSports and HTML5
2013How Atlas could kill the console and change gaming forever
2014A thread on a W3C mailing list asking browsers to let RTS games keep the cursor inside the game, which never happened
2015Chinese giant Tencent leads Series A funding in free-to-play developer Artillery
2016Artillery Games ceases development on MOBA/RTS Guardians of Atlas
2016RTS studio Artillery and its debut project Atlas are no more

FAQ

Is it open-source or still playable?: No, sorry. My biggest regret is not making sure there was a downloadable version of the game before we shutdown. All of Artillery's assets were sold when the company shut down in September, 2016. Years later we considered open-sourcing it and releasing a community version, but the legal issues are logistics are messy. As of October 2026, you can now play the game again as it was at time of release. Scroll up.
Why are the logos so boring?: We had awesome logos when we started and cinematic universes weren't yet a thing. But a certain superhero company decided to send us a trademark nastygram three days before launch. They have prior art for "an 'A' with three wings," and they didn't like a sci-fi game starting with "Guardians Of." So we didn't fight it. As of October 2026, I've updated the assets to use the original logos. Lawyers reading this should note that the game ceased development in 2016, that there are no plans to develop the game further, and that the images shown here are strictly for posterity and nostalgia.
What's with the domain?: We had artillery.com and guardiansofatlas.com but no longer own them. I needed a cheap domain that I could own permanently and this is the best I could do.
Why did the game shut down? Why didn't you <insert solution here>?: There's been a lot of speculation about why we shut down. The reality is that we simply didn't have a viable path forward with our remaining resources. Rather than continue struggling, we felt it was more important to ensure our remaining team members could transition to their next opportunities in the best possible position.
Audio in the web version is weird: That's unsurprising. Audio support was dropped for release in the web version because we had switched entirely native client development outside some internal testing. The native client uses FMOD for production-quality. Claude Code wrote some wizardry to pull the sounds out and at least get them playing, but it's best-effort and not as good as the native client versions.