Close Quarters

A chaotic, colorful, retro-inspired multiplayer strategy game.

How to Play

In Close Quarters, the objective is simple: Be the last player standing. The first player to destroy all of the power cores of the other players wins!

To do that, you'll spend each round buying and placing various units in your quadrant of the board. You want to deploy units in a way that protects your own power cores, while also dealing maximum damage to those of your enemies.

The action of the game takes place in three phases: A placement phase, a simulation phase, and a review phase.

How to Play

1. Place units

2. Watch simulation

3. Review board and repeat

When the game starts, the first thing you will do is place both of your power cores somewhere in your quadrant. (Hint: You need to protect your cores as best you can from enemy fire, so it's best to try to put them away from the center of the board)

After placing your cores, you'll start placing units. Each unit has a different health, cost, and method of doing damage. You can find the health and cost in the unit table. To read more about the unit's method, click on the unit to pull up its description. You can also check out the units section of this site.

To place a unit on the board, click it on the table, move your mouse over the tile of the board you'd like to place it on, and then click again. If you have enough credits to purchase that unit, it'll show up on the board. While hovering a potential unit placement over the board, you'll see yellow squares highlighting the potential attack paths of that unit, allowing you to easily coordinate your placements to do maximum damage to your opponents.

The number of credits that you currently have is indicated by the Volt symbol underneath the "Submit Orders" and "Review Board" buttons. You start the game with 7 credits, and units cost either 1, 2, or 3 credits. You'll automatically receive 5 credits per round, and you can earn 1 credit for every 200 damage dealt to other players' power cores in a given turn. Any credits that you don't spend during a placement phase automatically roll over to the next round.

While you are placing your units, you'll be able to see the state of the board as it was at the end of the last round, but you won't be able to see what the other players are currently doing. Likewise, they will not be able to see what you are currently doing. But you'll find out soon! Once you have finished placing your units, press the "submit orders" button. Make sure you are satisfied with your placements, however, because once you submit, your orders are final.

Once all players have submitted their orders, the game will automatically move to the next phase: the simulation phase.

How to Play

1. Place units

2. Watch simulation

3. Review board and repeat

In the second phase of the game, after everyone has submitted their orders, you will watch the action play out. Sit back and relax, there's nothing to do here but watch and see what havok your units are wreaking.

Action happening too fast for you to follow? Don't worry, because you'll get a chance to review it again and inspect in closer detail in the next phase: the review phase.

How to Play

1. Place units

2. Watch simulation

3. Review board and repeat

In the third phase of the game, you get on opportunity to review the board, see what happened during the last round, and use that information to inform your unit placement for the next round.

A scrolling display at the bottom of the screen informs you about how much damage your machines dealt, how many machines you destroyed, how many machines you lost, and other useful statistics.

Missed something during the action and want to review? Click and drag the "timeline" bar back and forth to scrub through the previous round to get a better look at what exactly happened.

When you are done reviewing, click "Deploy Machines" to return to the placement phase and start the whole process anew. You can toggle back and forth between the review and placement phase freely by pressing the corresponding buttons.

Ray Tracer

The Ray Tracer is a precise offensive machine used for reliable multifrontal attacks. It alternates firing horizontally and vertically, dealing low damage with each blast.

Red Shifter

The Red Shifter is a long-range offensive unit. It randomly fires in two directions simultaneously and the strikes must travel at least 10 tiles in order to do damage and does additional damage for each tile traversed.

Oscillator

The Oscillator is an inexpensive defensive unit that generates a single, powerful projectile at the start of each round. The charge begins diagonally and then acts as a random mover until hitting a target.

Beam Splitter

The Beam Splitter is a unique offensive unit that fires diagonally before splitting off in one of two directions. It can be used to hit otherwise difficult channels that lie between a straight shot and true diagonal.

Ballast

The Ballast is an advanced machine used for precise strikes on a limited set of targets. Its electric field rotates between six possible locations, delivering sustained damage.

Juggernode

The Juggernode is a defensive unit that also delivers diagonal strikes. Its photon beam deals a small amount of damage to everything in its path.

Tripwire

The Tripwire is a retaliatory machine that returns energy at a higher frequency. It requires an initial stimulus to activate or become 'tripped' and then a second stimulus in quick succession to fire. The powerful pulses cover a short distance and cannot be blocked by other machines or cores.

Maglev

The Maglev is an offensive powerhouse that emits magnetic pulses in all directions. These strikes begin with a high base damage that fades as they travel.

Resonator

The Resonator is a resiliant, area-of-effect damage dealing, catapult-style machine that delivers severe damage in an area once reaching its destination. The sheer power of the attack causes erratic projectile fire that travels in a random direction and hits a random number of spaces away.

Integrator

The Integrator is a high-potential machine that gains strength with each round it remains active. Its beams fires less frequently than other units, but cover four paths with total certainty.