Battleship

About Battleship

Battleship is a classic two-player naval strategy game of hidden information and deduction that dates back to a pencil-and-paper game played by soldiers around World War I, decades before Milton Bradley released the now-iconic plastic board game in 1967. Each player secretly arranges five ships on a 10×10 grid — Carrier (5 cells), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3), and Destroyer (2) — then takes turns calling out grid coordinates to fire on the opponent's waters. A hit is scored when a shot lands on an enemy ship, and a ship sinks once every cell it occupies has been hit; the first player to sink the entire enemy fleet wins.

Our version features a smart AI with Hunt/Target behavior — it searches broadly at first, but once it lands a hit, it switches into a focused targeting mode that probes the surrounding cells to finish that ship off, similar to how strong human players actually play. There's also real-time online multiplayer over peer-to-peer connections, so you can challenge a friend from anywhere just by sharing a room link — no account or download required. Because Battleship blends genuine deduction (tracking hit-and-miss patterns to infer ship positions) with a bit of luck in the opening moves, it runs at a different pace than reflex-based arcade games: sessions run a few minutes longer, and the tension builds turn by turn rather than in real time.

How to Play

1. 1Place your 5 ships on the grid — tap a cell to anchor each ship, use Rotate to switch between horizontal and vertical
2. 2Hit Random to place ships instantly if you prefer a quick start
3. 3Once both players are ready, take turns tapping cells on Enemy Waters to fire
4. 4A direct hit shows 🔥, a sunk ship shows 💀 — use the My Fleet tab to monitor incoming attacks
5. 5Sink all 5 enemy ships before they sink yours to win

Tips & Strategy

• •Spread your ships out and avoid touching edges and corners with your largest ships — they're easier to guess and trap there.
• •When hunting, fire in a checkerboard (every-other-cell) pattern first — since the smallest ship is 2 cells long, this guarantees contact with every ship using fewer wasted shots.
• •Once you land a hit, try the four adjacent cells before jumping elsewhere — most ships are found this way.
• •Keep track of confirmed misses; they let you rule out entire rows or columns as you narrow down remaining ships.
• •Don't cluster your own ships close together — a lucky miss pattern from your opponent can accidentally reveal more than one at once.

Frequently Asked Questions