Bowman

Bowman was one of the Flash games that in 2001 needed nothing more than two stick figures, a bow, and an arrow to entertain for tens of minutes during a break between classes. Two players took turns at the same keyboard, set the launch power and firing angle, and tried to hit the opponent on the other side of the screen before getting hit themselves. Wind also came into play, altering the arrow's trajectory and forcing players to rethink every shot instead of just repeating the same settings mechanically.

Simplicity was exactly what made Bowman so portable during the heyday of Flash game portals – it could be launched on a school computer between lessons, required no account or installation, and took just a few seconds to understand both the controls and the rules of the duel. That very lack of demands made it one of the most widely shared duels of the early Flash era, when links to games like this spread through chats, ICQ, and forums faster than almost anything else on the internet of the time.

Bowman later spawned a number of sequels and imitators with different weapons and settings, but it never went beyond the basic principle of a duel on a single screen. Today it remains mainly a memory of a time when Flash portals offered hundreds of similarly simple games and all anyone needed was a browser and a spare moment during a school or work break. After Flash support ended, though, the game vanished from the ordinary web along with most similar titles, and today players reach it mostly through archival emulators rather than directly in a browser.

Why play: For anyone looking for quick nostalgic fun in the style of old Flash portals who doesn't mind that it's a simple two-player duel with no grand ambitions and, since Flash is gone, only accessible through emulation.