A free browser game · You're the cutman

The fight happens off-screen. The sixty seconds in between are yours.

You're the one who patches a boxer's face between rounds. BETWEEN ROUNDS hands you his face, four tools and a clock that won't wait for you. Wipe the blood, stop the bleed, press the swelling down and keep him seeing, or the ring doctor stops the fight on your watch.

Work the first corner

Free, no signup, runs in this tab. Mouse is your hand: SPACE starts, 1-4 pick tools. No boxing knowledge needed; night one teaches you in about four minutes.
Desk only (no phone play).

The corner screen: a fighter's face with a graze on the mouth, the clock at 0:46, and the coach caption about keeping the enswell in the band. — Night one, after round two. Real screenshot, nothing composited.

Night two, round fourHere's how a fight gets lost.

This is the game playing itself with a built-in bot that sits in the corner and touches nothing. Night two, Sal "Cathedral" Reyes against Ivo Brandt. Sal takes the first three rounds. His left eye has been taking punches since round two, and in all three corners nobody touched it.

Then the ticker for round four, word for word:

The doctor is standing up. He's watching the left eye.
He walked into that one. The left eye is swelling.
Sal never saw it coming.
He found the left eye again. It's bleeding.
Sal never saw it coming.
A thudding jab marks the right brow.
He's not seeing them from that side.
The judges lean the other way on that round.

One more minute on the stool. Nobody touches the eye. The doctor walks over with his flashlight.

THE DOCTOR WAVED IT OFFstopped in round 4 — on your watch

He was up three rounds to one. The same do-nothing bot was ahead in night three as well, and got stopped there too. Those fights weren't lost in the ring. They were lost on the stool.

The minuteSixty seconds, four tools.

The bell rings and Sal sits down in front of you as a big face. You have sixty seconds (always sixty) and four tools on a tray. Your mouse is your hand.

1The first corner starts you on one bleeding cut and a towel. Ottie, his trainer, says it plainly: "You can't fix what you can't see." You drag the towel across the smear and the cut shows up underneath.

2Then the adrenaline swab. Hold it dead steady on the wound and the bleed slows under your hand. It works better on skin you've already wiped, so the order matters. Jitter the mouse and it stops counting.

3The enswell is where your hands get good. It's a cold steel press for swelling. Hold it down and the pressure climbs; let go and it falls. Keep it between the two green lines and the swelling drains. Push past them and the meter reads TOO HARD, and now you're adding swelling instead of taking it away. Ottie's version: "Lean on it. Not through it."

Try it. This box runs on the game's own enswell numbers, loaded from its tuning file:

PRESS

THE ENSWELL · RIGHT BROW

swelling

Hold the button. Watch the meter.

Works with a finger, a mouse or the space bar. In the game you're also aiming it at the right spot on a face while the clock runs.

Give it a corner or two to find the band. After that it's in your hands.

4Last comes the Vaseline. Drag it over a cut you've closed and it's much harder to reopen the next time a punch finds it. It wears off in the fight, so you grease again.

Then the bell rings. You're never done when the bell rings. You pick what stays broken.

Why the corner decides itYou never see a punch. Your corner shows up anyway.

Sal is the better boxer when he can see. Blood in his eye and swelling around it cut into how well he fights. That's why the round-four ticker above says "Sal never saw it coming" twice: his left eye was closing and nobody opened it.

The game's other bot, the one that works every corner, went all fifteen rounds of the career without that line showing up once. Your last minute is readable in the next round.

The off-screen round: ring ropes, ROUND 2 of 5, and ticker lines including 'Your work on the left eye just came undone.' — The fight you don't see: night two, round two, told by the ticker.

The man with the flashlightThe doctor warns you first. Every time.

From the third round of night one on, the doctor checks the worst thing on the face when the corner ends. He has exactly one rule, written into the game: he never stops a fight without warning you at an earlier corner that night. The screen says THE DOCTOR IS LOOKING and names the spot, and the ticker says he's standing up.

Night one he can look but can't stop anything; it's the safe room where you learn the tools. After that, if he waves it off, he warned you first.

THE DOCTOR IS LOOKING: the left eye. Flashlight glow on a drawn face with a swollen, cut eye and red streaks. — The warning, after round three of night two. This is about as graphic as the game gets.

Three nights, one faceThe face remembers.

The slice is three fight nights on Sal's comeback, three fights from a title shot:

NIGHT 1vs. Marco Ochoa, 4 rounds. "A tune-up that doesn't know it."
NIGHT 2vs. Ivo Brandt, 5 rounds. A cutter: he aims for what's already open.
NIGHT 3vs. Dan Kessler, 6 rounds. Hooks all night, and the eye is the target.

Any cut that's still deep at the end of a night becomes scar tissue, and it rides along to the next fight. The next brief says THE BODY REMEMBERS, and that spot opens easier from then on. Some of what that face remembers is your work.

Each night pays out three stars: he heard the final bell, he won the decision, and the corner's own star (every cut sealed, both eyes open at the last bell). Nine stars across the career. Get eight or more and the last screen says:

THREE NIGHTS career screen: three nights won with three stars each, 9/9 stars, 1 scar his face will keep, and the line 'The title shot is real. His managers are calling. So is his wife.' — The career screen after a clean run by the game's corner-working bot.

Take the stool

Sixty seconds per corner, twelve corners, one face. ESC freezes the clock whenever you need it.

Before you clickHonest gripes, because there are some.

It's desk-only. You need a mouse and a keyboard; there's no touch play, so phones are out. (The enswell box above works on a phone. The game doesn't.)
There's no music yet. You get a live crowd, the bell, a clack at ten seconds and thuds, all generated in the browser.
It's a three-night slice, about fifteen minutes of fight clock start to finish. Replaying for stars is the long game; there isn't a longer career yet.
The blood is cartoon streaks on a drawn face. Still, it's a face that gets hurt, and if that isn't your evening, fair enough.
It's a game model of a cutman's minute, not medical training. The kit is the real kit; the numbers are tuned for play.
Nobody outside the workshop has played it yet, so there are no reviews here. The screenshots and every quoted line come from the game itself; the two runs on this page are the game's own bots.

Questions

How long does it take?: Night one runs about four minutes. The whole three-night run is roughly fifteen minutes of fight clock, plus however long you stare at the report card.
Can I pause?: ESC freezes the corner clock exactly where it is. C turns off Ottie's captions once you don't need them.
What happens if the doctor stops it?: The night ends and gets graded, and the next fight still happens. R refights the night whenever you want another shot.
What gets saved?: Your best stars for each night, in your own browser. Close the tab mid-run and the next visit starts from night one.
Is it gory?: It's a drawn face with red streaks and swelling. It's all drawn: no photos, nothing lifelike. The doctor screenshot above is about as bad as it gets.
What's the catch?: None. It's free, with no ads, no account and no purchases. The game loads once (about 22 KB compressed), and after that it never talks to the internet: nothing is sent anywhere.
Who made it?: It's made for Play Moehr Games, a small browser arcade. Until it's listed there, this page runs its own copy.

Be the third pair of hands.

The bot that did nothing

Night two vs. Ivo Brandt.
Up 3–1 on the cards.
Stopped in round 4.

The bot that worked

Night two vs. Ivo Brandt.
Won 5–0.
He heard the final bell.

Two of the game's own bots, same fight. One never touched the face. The other worked every corner.

You get the next one.

He's sitting down. Go.

Free · no signup · desk + mouse · night one ≈ 4 minutes

P.S. If you only try one thing, try the enswell. Feel for the band, feather it, and watch the swelling go down.