Battleships Armada — Play Free Online

Battleships Armada is a naval puzzle game in the tradition of the classic grid game Battleship: somewhere out on the water there is a fleet you cannot see, and your job is to find and sink it using as few shots as you can. It sits on the puzzle shelf of Doodle Jump rather than among the jumpers, and it is a good change of rhythm when you want to think instead of react.

A session is calm and deliberate. There is no timer pushing you along and no reflex test; each turn you pick a square, see whether it was a hit or a miss, and use that small piece of information to narrow down where the rest of the ships must be. Rounds are short enough to fit in a few spare minutes, but the guessing game underneath rewards careful reasoning.

If you came to the site for Doodle Jump, this is the opposite end of the spectrum: the same pick-up-and-play simplicity, with the pressure replaced by deduction. It runs directly in the browser with nothing to install.

How to play

The page lists these controls: arrow keys or WASD to move, the mouse to aim and select, and tap and swipe on a phone. In practice the mouse or your finger does most of the work, since choosing a target square is a point-and-click action, while the keys are there as an alternative way to move around.

Aim at a square, confirm the shot, and read the result. A miss rules out that square and tells you something about its neighbours; a hit means a ship is there and the next shots should probe the squares around it to work out which direction the hull runs.

Tips

• After a hit, test the four neighbouring squares before wandering off. Ships lie in straight lines, so two hits in a row tell you the direction.
• When you have nothing to go on, spread your shots out instead of clustering them. Covering the board in a loose checkerboard pattern finds ships faster than random picks.
• Do not waste shots next to a ship you have already sunk; the squares around it are usually empty.
• On a phone, slow down before tapping so you do not select the wrong square.

Similar games on Doodle Jump

For another game where thinking matters, try Bloons Tower Defense 2, which is about placing defences and planning ahead. Fireboy and Watergirl is a cooperative puzzle platformer where you solve rooms rather than hunt for targets. If you would rather get back to quick reactions, Helix Jump and Doodle Jump itself are one-button-style games that are all about timing.

Battleships Armada suits anyone who likes a relaxed, turn-by-turn challenge and plays comfortably with either a mouse or a touch screen.