Fell the enemy king. Both sides first set up their army anywhere in their own half — build your fortress in response to theirs — then battle. Any piece that falls is removed. Mutual destruction is a draw.

In your very first game, one of your pieces glows and a hand shows the move: press it, pull back — a finger cocks behind it — and let go to flick it — the dashed arrow shows where it will fly. Only the glowing piece can fire until that first shot is away (or tap Skip tip). After that you're on your own.

Each king has a life bar (100%), shown at his feet. A hit hard enough to topple a normal piece chips his life — the harder the blow, the bigger the bite (a glancing topple takes a sliver, a monstrous hit a big chunk; roughly three solid hits fell him). At 0% he falls and the game ends. And striking at royalty is death: an enemy piece that damages the king is executed on the spot; the king's own pieces ricocheting into him are spared. Pawn walls are bodyguards — breach theirs, maintain yours. King takes king: if a king strikes a king, the one with more life remaining wins — the weaker king falls. Equal life = both fall, a desperate mutual trade. A king's surviving bodyguards count toward his life in that duel — bigger pieces and closer ones count for more, and men on the side the blow comes from count double those behind him, so a well-screened king outfights a bare one of the same health. Watch for the ⚠ exposed-king warning — it means an enemy has a clear lane to your king.

Turns strictly alternate — 1 shot each, White first. On your shot: press one of your pieces and pull back to aim — a finger cocks behind it and the piece glows red — then release to flick. Every shot strikes at full force — the pull sets direction only.

Every piece strikes with full force — but heavier pieces hit harder. Power is the impact a striker delivers (pawn = 10). Weight is how hard a piece is to push around. Stability is how hard it is to topple — the more a piece is worth, the steadier it stands.

The benchmark: a pawn fired from 8 squares away topples a queen only with a dead-centre hit. Glancing blows on valuable pieces need to be closer — pawns fall to sloppy shots, the queen only to clean ones. The king hits hard and, at double weight, is much harder to shove — though a solid, well-aimed blow still moves him.

A shot hits hardest on its first, direct contact. Every wall bounce costs your striker punch, and so does brushing your own pieces on the way. A piece you knock into another passes on only half the force, and half again down the chain. Bank shots and chain reactions still work — they just hit softer. After the game, Shot breakdown shows what every hit did and why.

A sliding piece loses force to friction — impact is strongest at point-blank range and fades with every square travelled. The calibration promise: even a pawn fired from one corner still topples a king in the opposite corner on a clear board — but only just. The same hit from nearby is devastating. Pieces in between absorb the blow by weight: a heavy queen soaks up momentum a light pawn would pass along.

The piece you fire is removed once the board settles — win or miss — so it can never linger in enemy territory to be fired again from a lethal position. Every shot is a trade: you spend a piece to land the blow. The king is the exception — he is never sacrificed by firing him, but he may only attack once he is your last piece standing. Beware ricochets felling your own army on the way out.

As you pull back, a preview shows your first contact: who you'll hit, a gold arrow for where they'll fly, a stub for your striker's deflection, and ✕ marks a piece that will topple. Everything beyond the first impact — chains, double-topples — is your gamble.

One flick can fell two or three pieces at once. The trick is reading the preview's two lines: the gold arrow is where the struck piece flies, and the stub is where your own striker deflects and keeps travelling. A chain lands when either of those runs on into more pieces — so aim to knock the first target into the next, or drive your striker straight through a line of them. Look for enemies lined up or bunched together, then hit them heavy and close: a rook or queen fired point-blank keeps enough momentum to bowl through several pieces, while a lone pawn from across the board barely topples one. Each link in a chain hits at half the force of the one before, so chains are best for knocking over pawns. The board past the first impact is unscripted physics — but once you start following those two vectors a hop ahead, the oversized shots stop being luck.

Big pieces walled in by pawns? Don't strike the blocked piece — strike the blocking pawn at the enemy. The striker vacates its square, so every pawn shot both attacks and opens a lane for the heavy artillery behind it. Pawns are ammunition, not furniture.

Before the battle each side sets up its army in its own half. First pick a battle plan — King's Armpit, Sicilian Shove or Grandpa's Gambit — and press Go ahead. Or choose Arrange my own and drag any piece to any empty square in your half — one piece per square, the king stays put. White sets up first, then Black answers having seen it. In a 2-player game, arranging by hand runs a 60-second clock. Misfired? ↶ Undo takes back your last shot.

Chess piece artwork by Colin M. L. Burnett (Wikimedia Commons), used under the BSD 3-Clause licence. See PIECES-LICENSE.txt.