Ricochet is a futuristic action game released on November 1st, 2000 by Valve. Unique in both gameplay and visual style, it's one of Valve's few completely original game concepts that doesn't originate in another video game or mod. The game is ran on the Goldsrc engine, the same engine used to build games like Half-Life and Counter-Strike.

Not much is known about the development process of Ricochet, but it's generally well accepted that it was made to show the versatility and ease-of-use of the Goldsrc engine to the modding community. The game was released as a free mod on November 1, 2000, and later was included in update 1.1.1.0 of Half-Life. As of now, it is sold as a separate entity entirely on Steam. Ricochet has never seen dedicated content updates aside from general Goldsrc engine updates.

Ricochet has been a source of amusement for followers of Valve games due to its historically low player count and simple gameplay. It has a reputation of being a "bad" game with little to offer. Despite this, many praise its novelty and unique concept, garnering itself something of a cult following over the years.

The game is not particularly complex on the surface; you spawn in an arena of platforms with yellow arrows hanging off the side, each of which shoot you in the direction they're pointing. Shoot discs at other players to either hit them off the platforms and fall into the void using left-click discs, or decapitate them by with right-click ones. The latter are more limited, and you can only shoot one when your disc meter (the three disc icons at the bottom of the screen during gameplay) is full. Shooting left-click discs is much faster and allows you to overwhelm enemies.

You score 1 point for directly hitting a player with a push shot or decapitating them. For each time your push disc bounces before a kill, you get an extra point; i.e., 2 bounces gives you 3 points. There are two modes in Ricochet: Deathmatch and Arena. In Deathmatch, your goal is to have the most amount of points by the end of the match.

If you're playing Arena mode, you really win by having the most Wins. Certain maps are on Arena mode, but most aren't; in it, you face one other player to a first-to-three matchup. If the server has more than two players, the game makes more arenas to allow more pairs to fight. The winner of each matchup gets a Win, and then both you and your opponent play another 1v1 against other players, or against each other if you're the only two in the lobby. Once the match concludes, the player with the most Wins is considered the victor.

Depending on the amount of players in the server, Ricochet can be anywhere from a slow, laid-back duel to a chaotic mess that lacks any sort of strategic play. Game speed also largely depends on the map, where some are much bigger than others.

There are two primary types of discs:

• Push Discs
  
• Decapitator Discs

As mentioned in the gameplay section, push discs are used to push players off of the platforms and into the void, while decapitators will instantly kill enemies upon contact. Discs gain unique attributes and powers when you pick up powerups, all of which are listed in the next section of the guide.

Discs cannot be thrown up or down, therefore they only really travel in two dimensions. Assuming you have a full disc meter, about two discs can be thrown per second. You also cannot hit yourself with your own disc; you will instead grab the disc and it will be added back to your disc meter. Discs that bounce off the yellow rails or fly into the skybox will be returned to the player as well.

Given that there's no health in Ricochet, discs don't deal any sort of damage. Getting hit by a disc and surviving is common.

Pictured to the right is what a disc looks like as held by the playermodels in-game. When thrown, they are illuminated and colored the same color as your playermodel. When you join a game, you get a color to distinguish you from the rest of the players. For example, if you're green, you'll shoot green discs.

There are 4 different powerups in unmodified Ricochet:

• Freeze Shot
  
• Fast Shot
  
• Triple Shot
  
• Power Shot

Powerups generally have a central spawn point on most maps, and bigger ones will have numerous spots for them to spawn. Before a new powerup can appear, the old one has to be picked up; i.e., if there's a Freeze Shot floating in the air, it's not going to disappear and turn into something else until a player picks it up. Each powerup has an equal chance (1 in 4) of spawning.

If you fall/are decapitated while you have a powerup, you will spawn back with that same powerup.
When a player is hit with Freeze Shot, their movement speed is slowed down immensely. A ice-cracking sound is played when someone is hit with it. The next Freeze Shot that hits them wouldn't freeze them again, but rather push them like a standard disc would.
Fast Shot turns your fire rate from around 2 per second to 5 per second, and makes discs travel 1.25x faster. It also slows down your disc meter from emptying, allowing a player to shoot around ten discs in quick succession.
Triple Shot allows you to fire three discs at once. They shoot in a triangular pattern, all at once.
Power Shot turns all of your discs into Decapitator discs, allowing you to shoot them at the same rate as standard discs. It's arguably the most powerful powerup, granting the player instakill discs that they can shoot quickly.

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Ricochet has some unused content sitting in the files.
This model would have presumably became a powerup of some sort given its file name begins with "pow", similar to the other powerups. It's thought that the player would have been able to curve their discs into the enemy using this powerup. Strangely, it has the appearance of a soccer ball, which obviously sticks out amongst the rest of the powerup models, so it's unknown if this was just a placeholder model or if the powerup would have genuinely looked like it does in the GIF to the left.

Some maps and community servers can be found with the model being used. This model is also used in Team Fortress Classic as a soccer ball.
Another unused powerup, it's thought that it would have shown the player the trajectory of their discs. Again, its visual style is highly distinguished from the others, so it's unknown if this model was just a placeholder.

Some maps and community servers can be found with the model being used. This model is also used in Team Fortress Classic as a present.
Ricochet only has one player model, and the only variation of it in-game is color. However, there is a female model in the files, leading players to believe that there was once supposed to be numerous playermodels to choose from.
There's an unused sound file titled rocket1. It was probably supposed to be used with a powerup that never came to light.