Guide 13 · Rookie
Playing a case in your browser
≈ 3 min readThe launch bay, the in-game toolbar, mouse capture, and how your saves follow you between browsers.
carmen.games runs the original MS-DOS disks through js-dos, a DOSBox-X build compiled to WebAssembly, so the actual 1980s and 1990s program is what you are playing, just delivered over the web instead of a floppy. Here is exactly how the site's own player works, end to end.
01
Pick a case file at the launch bay
Go to /play, the launch bay. Choose a title from the case-file dropdown; the file number and game title update above it, and the panel below reads C:\GAMES\CARMEN> with a blinking cursor while it waits for you.
02
Open the case
Click Open the case. The game takes over the whole window and starts on its own: there is nothing to install, no disk to insert and no menu to click through. Cases the archive has no game file for say so on the panel instead of offering the button.
03
Capture your mouse, and know how to let go
Click anywhere inside the game window to capture your mouse pointer, the games that use a mouse need this. Press Esc at any time to release the pointer back to your normal cursor, useful the instant you need to reach a browser tab or address bar.
04
Find the in-game toolbar
The player draws its own toolbar over the game: Home (back to carmen.games), Back (back to the launch bay at /play), Save, an on-screen keyboard, DOSBox Config, a File System browser, Fullscreen, Turbo Mode, and Settings. Quick Save (F6) and Quick Load (F7) show up too on cases where the site has that hotkey pair switched on; it's a per-case setting, not guaranteed on every title. Apart from those two and Pause, every key you press is passed straight through to DOS — there is no menu hotkey, and fullscreen is the button on the strip rather than F11, which the running game will simply receive as a keystroke.
05
Tune sound and mouse feel in Settings
Open Settings for Volume, mouse sensitivity, the mouse-capture toggle, and Pause; a Worker thread and screen-Aspect option live there too if a case ever runs rough. Turbo Mode, on the main toolbar, speeds up the emulated CPU if a game is dragging on a slower connection.
06
Trust the autosave, but know what it syncs where
The emulator autosaves as you play. As a guest, that save lives only in this browser's storage. Sign in and it is written to your account through the site's save API instead, so the same case picks up on another device. Sign in for the first time after playing as a guest and the site lifts your existing guest saves up to the account automatically, once, so nothing already on record is lost.
07
Manage saves from the launch bay
Back at /play, the Save states panel lists every synced save for the selected case with its size and last-updated time, and gives you Load, Export (download the raw save file), and Delete for each. Signed out, that panel just tells you to sign in to keep saves across devices, your progress in this browser is unaffected either way.