QWOP: 100 metres on 4 keys

How an attempt at QWOP goes

The Poki copy has no card to click through. The run starts by itself, and the runner is a ragdoll: left alone he tipped forward and fell at 1.3 metres, twice, in 2 separate page loads on 10 November 2026.

The end card has 5 lines: "PARTICIPANT", "showing real courage, you ran:", "1.3 metres", "everyone is a winner" and "press space to restart". Space restarted the run at once, with no advert in between.

Each key drives one muscle group, so the wrong rhythm tips him over. Our longest attempt lasted 84 to 90 seconds and covered 13.6 metres, most of it on one knee. A clean 100 metres takes about a minute: the Guinness record run was 51 seconds. 5 minutes is room for dozens of falls (est.).

The 4 keys, and Space to go again

Q W

Thighs. W held for 0.45 seconds split the legs, one thigh forward and one back; Q swung them the other way.

O P

Calves. Each bent a knee in turn, and the runner shuffled backwards to minus 0.3 metres.

W O

Pressed together for a third of a second, then Q and P together, over and over: he dropped to one knee and scooted from 0.4 to 6.3 metres in about 17 seconds.

Space

Restart from the end card.

R

Restart during an attempt, per Wikipedia. Not verified by us.

Poki's own line: "Use Q and W to control the runner's thighs. Use O and P to control the runner's calves." The game needs both hands on a keyboard and no mouse. Touch versions were separate phone apps, released for iOS on 13 December 2010 and for Android on 4 July 2013. We did not check whether they are still on sale.

What QWOP costs and where adverts sit

Free. The game has no shop, no coins and no button that trades an advert for a reward, and Poki links no app-store edition.

Adverts would sit in 2 boxes on the page, right of the game and beneath it; on 10 November 2026 we found them empty. Nothing played before the game and nothing between our 3 attempts. A reader in the UK may see those boxes filled: our connection was in Thailand.

Account and age rule

There is no account, and the game showed nothing to save: no best distance appeared.

No store edition is linked, so no PEGI or App Store rating turned up. For the site as a whole Poki named 16 and older to our address in Thailand; a UK reading of that page is still missing. The game shows a cartoon athlete falling over. It has no chat and no other players.

Why QWOP has no leaderboard

QWOP has no leaderboard, and that is deliberate. Foddy explained: "One of the things I found with QWOP is that people like to set their own goals in a game. Some people would feel like winners if they ran 5 meters, and others would feel like winners if they inched all the way along the track over the course of an hour."

Guinness World Records did recognise one time. Roshan Ramachandra of Chintamani ran the 100 metres in 51 seconds on 10 April 2013, as reported by Wikipedia. Faster community runs may exist; we verified none. The Poki copy showed no best-distance display in our 3 attempts.

From an Oxford philosophy thesis to the Museum of Modern Art

Foddy "taught himself to make games while he was procrastinating from finishing his dissertation in philosophy", Wikipedia says, and he worked at the Oxford Martin School of the University of Oxford. QWOP came out in November 2008 and by August 2011 had helped foddy.net reach 30 million hits.

On 27 July 2011 it was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at an event called Arcade. It also turned up in the season 9 premiere of the American sitcom The Office.

A 2-player version, 2QWOP, followed on 16 February 2012: a split screen with one runner on Q, W, E and R and the other on U, I, O and P. Foddy later made Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (2017). His site describes him as "an independent game designer based in Brooklyn, New York".

The game screen on Poki still carries the label "QWOP © Foddy.net 2008". Poki lists 3 more of his games under the same credit: GIRP, Get On Top and Little Master Cricket.