How to play Inktide

Inktide is a game about territory, played in a browser tab. A match takes five minutes, up to twenty players share one map, and you neither install anything nor create an account — the first thing that happens when you open the page is that you are in a lobby.

The one idea

You own tiles. Tiles make soldiers. Soldiers take more tiles. Everything else in the game is a decision about how fast to run that loop and where to point it.

Your soldier count grows on its own, faster the more land you hold, and it is the only resource that matters in the first minute. It is also the only thing you can lose all of in one bad order, which is why the game gives you a dial rather than a button.

Before the match starts

While the lobby fills you are looking at the map you are about to play. Tap anywhere on land to claim it as your starting point. You can move the pick until the countdown locks it a few seconds before the start; if you never pick one, the game places you somewhere reasonable and you lose nothing but the choice.

Two things are worth thinking about. Coastline is a second front — it is a way in for anybody with boats, and a way out for you. And distance from other players is time: every start is kept a set number of tiles from every other one, but the map decides whether that gap is open ground or a mountain range.

If the lobby is short of people, bots take the spare places so nobody waits for a crowd that is not coming, and the results mark every one of them. The Fairness page says why that will not change.

Taking ground

Tap a neighbouring country or an empty stretch of land and your army marches at it. The bar at the bottom is how much of your army goes: drag it and the figure underneath shows the actual number of soldiers you are about to commit, next to what that stretch of border costs to take. That comparison is the whole game.

Send everything and you take this border with nothing left to hold the others. Sending a quarter keeps you safe and takes ground slowly enough that somebody else gets there first. There is no correct setting; there is a setting that is correct against the person you are fighting right now.

Land you take from a player is land they no longer produce from, so a border that moves tends to keep moving. That is the reason a match is five minutes and not twenty.

Coins and buildings

A second resource fills more slowly: coins. You spend them on four things, and each one costs land to be worth building.

• City — Raises the soldiers your whole country produces.
• Port — Faster ships, warships, and trade with other ports.
• Factory — Arms your border. Your land costs more to take.
• Mine — Digs coins. The steady half of your income.

Buildings are paid for in coins and never in soldiers, so building never costs you a fight. What it costs is the coins you were saving for a navy.

Water

Water is not a wall. A transport carries an army from your coast to any shore it can reach, which means an island is a strong position and never a safe one, and that whoever holds the far side of a strait is your neighbour whether or not you have met them.

Ports make your ships faster and are where warships are built. A warship holds open water: it fires on what comes near it and it is how you make a crossing expensive for somebody else. Trade runs between ports too: two players' ports within reach of each other open a route on their own, and the route pays both ends — which makes a neighbour with a coastline worth more to you standing than conquered. The strategy guide has the numbers.

Alliances

You can offer an alliance to anybody in the match, and either of you may end it whenever you like, immediately, with no notice period. An ally's border is not a front you have to watch, and that is worth more than any building.

It is also the most dangerous thing in the game. Nothing stops somebody breaking an alliance the instant it stops being useful to them, and nothing warns you first. Play accordingly.

The end

At five minutes the match stops and the scoreboard is the map: whoever holds the most ground wins, and everybody is placed in order. You gain experience for playing and more of it for placing well, which raises a level and unlocks cosmetics — colours, patterns and frames. None of them do anything to a match. There is no item in this game that makes your soldiers stronger and there is never going to be one.

Then you can watch the replay, share the result, or press again. Most people press again.