About Weight of Arrows
Weight of Arrows is a bow, a short clock and a wooden training dummy swinging on a rope. The dummy is a full ragdoll — twelve joints held together by physical constraints — so it does not follow a path, it swings, twists and flails according to what has been done to it.
The name is the rule. Every arrow you land transfers its momentum into the dummy and then stays there, buried in the timber, as extra weight. A clean hit sets your target swinging harder for the next shot. A run that is going well is a run getting more difficult, and the difficulty curve is one you build yourself, arrow by arrow.
The clock is the other half. You start with forty-five seconds and a score to reach; reaching it clears the wave, pays a bonus and buys fifteen seconds back, and the next dummy hangs on a shorter rope so it swings faster and further. Time is something you earn rather than something you spend, and a run ends the moment you stop earning it.
How to play
- Drag backwards from the bow and release, the same motion as drawing a real one — pull further for more power, and the angle follows your drag.
- A short dotted arc shows the start of the flight path. It teaches you the drop; it will not aim for you.
- Score by what you hit. The head is worth 100, a forearm or shin 65 and 55, the body 20.
- Consecutive hits build a combo up to triple points. One arrow in the dirt resets it to nothing.
- One bone is ringed and marked ×3. Hitting it pays triple and immediately marks a different one.
- Hitting the rope itself cuts it. That is worth 250, drops the dummy, and brings out a fresh one.
- Reach the score shown under “To clear” before the clock runs out. Clearing a wave adds fifteen seconds and hangs the next dummy on a shorter, faster rope.
Five tips that actually move your score
- Shoot the body first, the head later. The combo multiplier is worth more than the head bonus until you are three or four hits deep. A 20-point body shot at triple is worth more than a 100-point head shot that follows a reset.
- Aim where the dummy is going, not where it is. At the ends of a swing it hangs almost still for a moment; through the middle it is moving fastest. The turning points are the free shots.
- A limb hit spins it, a body hit shoves it. Striking an outstretched arm applies torque and sets the whole figure rotating, which makes your next shot much harder. If you want a calm target, hit near the chest.
- Watch your own arrows accumulate. Each one adds weight where it landed. Four arrows in the left arm and the dummy hangs lopsided — which is predictable, and therefore useful, once you notice it.
- Go for the rope when the combo is already high. 250 points at triple is 750, and the fresh dummy arrives swinging gently, which is the easiest target in the game to start a new streak on.
- The mark is worth breaking your rhythm for. Triple on a 65-point forearm is 195 before the combo multiplier even applies. If the ring is on a limb that is about to swing through your line, take that shot instead of the easy body hit.
- Clear early, not late. The fifteen seconds a wave pays are worth more at the start of a wave than at the end of one, because they carry into every wave after it. Chasing one more head shot when you are eight points from clearing is how runs end.
Frequently asked questions
What makes the target get harder?
Your own accuracy. Every arrow that lands transfers momentum into the dummy and then stays embedded as extra mass, so each hit sets it swinging harder and shifts its balance. Nothing about the game speeds up on a timer — the difficulty is entirely a consequence of how well you are shooting.
Is there any blood or violence?
No. The target is a wooden training dummy, there is no health bar, nothing is injured and nothing dies. It is a physics toy about momentum, not a fighting game.
How do the waves work?
Each wave has a score to reach, shown on the board as “To clear”. Reaching it ends the wave immediately — mid-swing, on the arrow that earned it — pays a bonus of 100 plus 60 per wave, and adds fifteen seconds to the clock. The next dummy hangs on a rope nine pixels shorter, which makes it swing faster and through a wider arc, and it is pushed harder to start. The run ends when the clock does.
What is the ringed bone?
A bounty. One bone is marked ×3 at all times; hitting it scores triple and the mark moves to a different bone straight away. It is never the head, which is already the highest-scoring target — the point of the mark is to make you aim somewhere you otherwise would not.
How is the physics done?
Verlet integration — the figure is twelve point masses joined by distance constraints, solved four times per frame, with the rope as a short chain of the same kind. It is written from scratch in about six hundred lines of JavaScript with no physics library.
Can I play without a mouse?
Yes. Up and down arrows change the angle, left and right change the draw weight, and space fires. It also works with a finger — drag back anywhere on the board and let go.
