An .io game with no download and no sign-up

Inktide is a free multiplayer .io game that runs in the browser you already have open: nothing to download, no account to create, and no form to fill in before your first match.

Play now Free, in this tab. The button puts you in the next public match.

What pressing Play does

The button on this page puts you in the next public match. Behind it, the server makes you a guest on the spot: a generated name such as Falcon House, a colour of your own and a seat in a lobby of up to twenty. There is no email to confirm, no password to invent, and nobody asks your age just to play. The lobby counts down for half a minute while people arrive, and for a few seconds when you are the only person in it. If too few people are around, bots make up the numbers, so the match starts anyway, and each of them is marked as a bot in the results.

A phone, a tablet or a computer

Inktide needs a current browser with WebGL 2, which every major browser has supported for years; there is no plugin and no installer. The whole map is drawn by the graphics chip in a single pass rather than tile by tile. On a touch screen you tap to send your army, drag to look around and pinch to zoom, and a mouse works through the same controls. From your second visit the game offers to install itself like an app. That is optional too: it is the same page with its own icon, and it still needs a connection, because every match is played live on the server rather than on your device.

What is kept without an account

Your level, the colours you unlock and your quests are kept from the first match, tied to this browser. Nothing asks you to register before you play: saving the account, with an email address and a password, is offered at the end of a match with a Not now beside it, and it is for players aged sixteen and over. Saving is what carries your progress to another device. Until you do, clearing this browser's storage starts you again as a new guest.

Five minutes at a time

A public match lasts five minutes at most, so a game fits into a gap in the day, and nothing is lost by walking away between matches. When one ends, the end screen offers Play again straight away, and you can watch the whole match back as a replay before you decide. If you would rather read the rules first, how to play walks through a match from the lobby to the result.

Free, with nothing in the way of a match

Every mode and every map is free to play, and there is no advertising during a match, ever. Anything on sale is optional, and none of it gives anybody an advantage once the match starts. The game is played at inktide.io and nowhere you have to install it from: the address in your browser is the whole of it.

Play now Free, in this tab. The button puts you in the next public match.