How do you play Sea Battle?
Each player secretly hides five ships on a 10×10 sea, then both take turns calling one square at a time on the other sea. Sink the whole enemy fleet first and you win. It is the classic pencil and paper guessing game, also known as Battleship, redrawn from scratch by ormgames.
An empty square shows a white splash marker for a miss, and a ship square shows a flame for a hit. Hit every square of a ship and it sinks, revealing its shape. The little fleet strip under each sea shows which ships are still afloat.
Which ships are there and how are they placed?
| Ship | Squares |
|---|---|
| Carrier | 5 |
| Battleship | 4 |
| Cruiser | 3 |
| Submarine | 3 |
| Destroyer | 2 |
- Direction: ships go across or down, never diagonally.
- No overlapping: ships cannot overlap or hang off the sea. Placing them side by side is allowed.
- One shot per turn: your turn ends after every shot, even a hit.
- Sinking: when every square of a ship is hit, the game announces which ship went down.
- Winning: the first player to hit all 17 squares of the enemy fleet wins.
What is the difference between easy, normal and hard?
Easy fires at random, normal hunts around every hit, and hard counts every spot the remaining ships could still be hiding and fires at the most likely square. Over 2,000 test games against random fleets, easy needs about 95 shots on average to sink everything, normal about 60 and hard about 45.
Tips to win
- Open with a checkerboard pattern. The smallest ship is two squares long, so firing at every other square is guaranteed to touch every ship.
- After a hit, try the four squares around it. Once two hits line up you know the direction, so only the two ends of that line matter.
- Skip gaps that are too small. If the destroyer is already sunk, no ship can hide in a two square gap.
- Mix your own ships between the edges and the middle. The same layout every game is easy for a human to read. When in doubt, tap auto place a few times.
In two player mode the screen is covered every time the turn changes, and the sea only appears after the next player taps I'm ready. Your fewest shots to beat the computer are saved per level in this browser.