DANKGAME

What you do

PLAY starts a Conquest, a whole match. You pick one of two peoples, and your hero leaves his town at the near edge of a painted map 10 tiles wide and 18 deep, with 11 days to reach the boss lair at the far one. Each day he has 12 movement: a road tile costs 1, grass 2, forest and hills 3, swamp 4, and water, mountains and rock cannot be crossed. The fog lifts 3 tiles around every tile he walks, and new troops arrive every 3 days: the dwellings in his town and on the map refill on days 4, 7 and 10. One people starts with 30 spearmen, 12 archers, 10 dire wolves and 5 shieldmen, plus 500 gold, 5 wood and 5 ore; the other fields more, cheaper bodies. An army holds 6 stacks at most, and the dead stay dead.

On the way he gathers gold and ore, flags mines for income, hires troops in his town and fights the lairs in his path. Each lair shows its size and what a win pays before you commit, and every lair fight is played on the board by you. Clearing a monster lair pays 100, 200 or 300 gold by its size, and 30% of its strongest guard stack joins your army. The boss is Haskett, the Millstone Reeve: he gains 3% of his full might every day and loses 3% for every monster lair you clear, and his lair is sealed until you break 2 of his three wardens.

Quick battle, in the title’s menu, is one fight: you draft an army from 1000 gold, at most five stacks, and the computer drafts its own without seeing yours. Every fight in the game is played on an 8 by 10 board where the fastest stack acts first and a stack struck in melee swings back once per round. Before you strike, tapping an enemy shows the damage you would deal and take back.

Duel is a match for two on one shared map: each of you has a hero, a town and an army, you both play every day at the same time, and there is no boss. It ends in one final battle between the two armies. Invite a friend makes a private six-character code and a link to send; your friend types the code into Join a code or simply opens the link, and the duel starts the moment they join. Blitz, Standard and Slow set the clocks, from 30-second days to 3-minute ones. Play the computer is a practice duel that runs entirely in your browser. If a player’s connection is lost, the clocks keep running, and at Standard the computer takes that seat after 90 seconds.

How long a round takes

A Conquest ends when you clear the boss lair, when your last stack falls in a fight, or when day 11 ends with the boss still in his lair. A won match scores 1000, plus 100 for each day left of the 11, plus 100 for each other lair cleared, minus 2 for each creature of yours that died, and never goes below zero; a lost match scores nothing. So a fast win is worth more than a careful one only if the days it saves outweigh the lairs it skips: each costs or earns the same 100.

A Quick battle, like every lair fight, ends when one army has no creatures left; if both still stand after 40 rounds, the side with more hit points left wins. A Duel ends in its final battle, which starts when the two heroes meet, or on day 12, the last day, if they never do.

The match is saved after every action, so the title offers Continue after a reload.