Stick War — Play Free Online

Stick War is a real-time strategy game drawn entirely in stick figures. You lead a small nation on a long, flat battlefield, with your statue at one end and the enemy's statue at the other. The goal is simple: tear down their statue before they tear down yours. Everything in between is about money, timing and knowing when to push.

It is a slower, more thoughtful pick than most of what sits around Doodle Jump. Where Doodle Jump asks for constant reflexes, a Stick War battle rewards planning: you spend a minute deciding what to build, then watch the lines of little soldiers collide. If you like the "one more try" feel of a jumper but want something with a bit of strategy, this is a good change of pace.

How to play

Movement is on the arrow keys or WASD, and the mouse is used to aim and to pick things from the menus. On a phone you tap and swipe instead. The game runs in the browser with nothing to install.

The economy starts with miners. Miners dig gold from nearby mines and carry it home, and gold pays for every other unit. Early on you will usually want a few miners working before you train fighters. From there you recruit an army of different soldier types and decide where it stands: held back to defend, or sent forward to attack. The armies meet in the middle and the side with the better mix, and more gold behind it, usually wins the push.

Fighters are not all equal. Close-range units are cheap and good for soaking damage, ranged units hurt from behind them, and tougher or magical units cost more and take longer to afford. Each type is strong against something and weak against something else, so a single-unit army tends to get picked apart.

Tips

• Keep gold flowing. If your miners die, you can no longer replace your army, so protect them.
• Mix unit types instead of spamming the cheapest one.
• Do not send everything forward at once. A defensive line near your own statue is easier to hold, and you can advance once you have a lead.
• Take direct control of a single unit when you can, since a player-steered fighter often beats an automatic one.

Similar games on Doodle Jump

Bloons Tower Defense 2 is the closest relative on this site: it is also about spending money wisely to hold off waves, though you place towers instead of soldiers. Fireboy and Watergirl and Ovo 2 are puzzle and platform games that test timing and routes, not strategy. Day D Tower Rush is another defence-minded game if you enjoy managing a base.

Stick War suits a longer sit-down than the quick runs on most pages here, and it plays comfortably with mouse and keyboard on a desktop.