Blog ·
What is Boulder Dash?
Boulder Dash is a puzzle action game from 1984 in which you dig through a cave, seen from above, collecting diamonds while the boulders above you fall into the gaps you leave. Gather enough diamonds and the exit opens; get caught under a falling rock and you lose a life. It was made by Peter Liepa with Chris Gray, two Canadians, first published by First Star Software for the Atari 400 and 800, and its hero, Rockford, is still digging more than 40 years later.
Who made Boulder Dash?
The series' official site, run by its current owner BBG Entertainment, tells the story on its history page. Liepa and Gray sent an unfinished game to several publishers. At First Star Software, the disk was opened by co-founder and president Richard M. Spitalny, who was "hooked almost immediately". On Oct 28, 1983, First Star bought all rights to the game in return for royalties to the two creators, and the game came out in 1984.
Where the idea came from is told in an interview with Peter Liepa on the same site. Gray had a slow demo with, as Liepa put it, "basically one level", which drew on the arcade game The Pit. Liepa agreed to convert it, but his own ideas about what the game should be took over, and the two drifted apart as he rebuilt it.
It went on to be one of the best-loved home computer games of its decade. The history page lists the awards it won, among them "Game of the Year" from Personal Computer and "Arcade Game of The Year" from Family Computing, and versions for the Commodore 64, Apple II, IBM PCjr and many more machines. It even went the other way into arcades: Exidy put an Atari 600XL inside a coin-op cabinet with Boulder Dash as its lead game, which the page calls the first home computer game released into arcades after it came out at home.
How does Boulder Dash play?
Every cave is a grid of tiles, and almost everything follows one rule: things fall. The official history describes what each part of the cave does:
| Tile | What it does |
|---|---|
| Dirt | Rockford digs through it, leaving an empty tunnel behind |
| Boulders | Fall into the space you dig out under them, and a falling one is deadly |
| Diamonds | What you are there for. Collect enough and the door to the exit opens |
| Fireflies | Patrol the tunnels. Drop a boulder on one and it explodes, blowing open the walls around it |
| Butterflies | Explode when crushed too, each into as many as 9 diamonds |
| Amoeba | Keeps growing. Surround it in time and it all turns to diamonds; if not, it all turns to boulders |
| Magic walls | Turn boulders that fall through them into diamonds |
Two details made it more than a maze game. Rockford can grab, push or dig from where he stands, without stepping in, so you can take a diamond from under a rock without being under it when it falls. And the caves were tuned to be fair. Spitalny's view, on the history page, was that when you failed a cave it felt like your own mistake, not the game suddenly speeding up. Small bonus caves, which did not scroll, came after every four caves.
What came after the first game?
A long series, in many hands. The history page lists each one:
- Boulder Dash II: Rockford's Revenge (1985) added walls that grow sideways once dug out, and slime that slows falling rocks.
- Boulder Dash III (1986) was made under license by another studio, with space-themed graphics and some levels that could not be finished.
- Boulder Dash Construction Kit (1986 in Europe, 1987 in the US) let players make and swap their own caves.
- Arcade, NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, phone, Xbox 360 and Switch versions followed over the next decades.
- In mid 2017, BBG Entertainment bought all rights to Boulder Dash from First Star Software.
The newest, Boulder Dash 40th Anniversary, came out on Steam on Aug 20, 2025. Its Steam page counts 320 levels, including 80 classic levels from the first four games with their original Atari 400/800, C64, ZX Spectrum and Apple II graphics, and a level editor.
Can you play Boulder Dash in your browser?
Yes, officially and for free. BBG Entertainment's site has the 1984 original to play online ("Press ENTER to start the game!") and a touch-friendly classic version that says "tap to start". There is nothing to install.
What games are like Boulder Dash?
Boulder Dash started a tradition of cave-digging games, and our Boulder Dash page gathers the games inspired by it. Two you can play free:
- Rocks'n'Diamonds by Artsoft Entertainment, an arcade game for Linux, Mac, Windows and Android that its about page describes as "in the tradition of" Boulder Dash, Emerald Mine, Supaplex and Sokoban, with a level editor and classic levels for all of them.
- Tectonic, our own cave digger, which plays in your browser. We read its code on Nov 5, 2026.
Tectonic keeps the original's rules (fireflies, butterflies that burst into gems, the amoeba, magic walls, pushing a boulder sideways into an empty space, and a grab key that digs without stepping in) and adds one of its own: tremors. From cave 3, every so often a two-second warning shakes the screen, then every boulder resting on dirt breaks loose at once, so a safe tunnel you dug earlier may not stay safe. How it compares:
| Boulder Dash (1984) | Tectonic | |
|---|---|---|
| The cave | Scrolls as you move, with small non-scrolling bonus caves | Fits on one screen, so you can plan the whole of it |
| Levels | A fixed set of caves | Made from the cave's number, so cave 4 is the same for everyone, and there is no last cave |
| The twist | The original rules | Tremors, from cave 3 on |
In Tectonic you need about 62% of a cave's gems to open the exit, so one unlucky rockfall cannot make a cave impossible. You get 3 lives and 150 to 210 seconds a cave, and two people can play together on one keyboard in co-op (the arrow keys and WASD).
Tectonic plays with the keyboard, and on a touch screen it shows an on-screen pad. Our 1980s page has more classics of the era.
Play Tectonic, play the 1984 original on the official site, or browse the hub for more games and the classics behind them.
More from the blog
Why are browser games silent until you click?Browsers block sound on a page until you interact with it, so a web game cannot play audio before your first click, tap or key press. Here is how the rule works and why it exists.
What is procedural generation in games?Procedural generation means a game builds its levels, maps or worlds with rules and random numbers instead of storing each one made by hand. Here is how it works, what a seed is, how Rogue, Elite, Minecraft and No Man's Sky used it, and three browser games where you can see it.
What was the first computer RPG?The earliest computer role-playing game that still survives is pedit5, also called The Dungeon, written by Rusty Rutherford on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois in 1975. Here is how it played, the rival that followed it, the lost game called m199h, and where you can try them today.