How to play

Each team has a castle. Destroy the enemy castle and you win; lose yours and you are out. Matches run a set number of waves (30 by default). If the castles still stand when the waves run out, the match heads into Sudden Death to force a finish.

Every unit building you place adds soldiers to your team's waves. A wave spawns every 60 seconds and marches down the lane toward the enemy castle, fighting everything in its path. Units pick their own targets and use their own abilities: your job is deciding WHAT gets built, not micromanaging the fight.

Buildings go on your build plot. Towers are the exception: they only fit on dedicated tower spots, and they defend the ground they can reach. Most unit buildings can also be upgraded into stronger versions that train better units.

In the default team mode, teammates take turns: each wave is fielded by one member of the team, rotating. The wave counter at the top of the screen shows whose turn is next and when.

Four numbers run your engine. Understanding them is most of the game.

• Gold arrives every 30 seconds from your Income. Everything is bought with it.
• Income grows when you spend: every 10 Gold spent on unit buildings adds +1 Income. Spending IS investing. A player who banks gold falls behind one who turns it into buildings.
• Wood arrives as a bonus when you place unit buildings. Spend it on special buildings.
• Stardust is the rare one. You start with a little and gain more only rarely; it buys the most powerful buildings. Spend it carefully.

Food is the cap on all of it: unit buildings cost Food, and your Food limit decides how much army you can field at once. Research can raise the cap.

Two identical armies never trade evenly. Every attack has an attack type, every unit has an armor type, and the damage matrix decides the multiplier where they meet. Scout what the enemy is massing, then build what counters it.

On top of that sit elements (fire, ice, poison, lightning, arcane and friends), immunities that zero them out, and status effects like stuns, slows, and auras. When your waves suddenly stop trading well, the answer is almost always in the matchup, not the stat totals.

The build bar has three tabs. Build places buildings. Research unlocks faction upgrades, most of them tiered, that improve your units or your economy for the rest of the match. Shop offers resource trades and one-off items like a team-wide protection scroll, each on its own cooldown.

Single player: New Game gives you a 1v1 against an AI opponent. Multiplayer: Create Server lets you set team count, players per team, wave mode, fog of war, and the round limit; friends join from the server browser. Quickplay is the ranked queue: pick a faction, get matched 1v1, and your rating moves with the result.

• Camera: WASD or push the mouse to the screen edge. Click and hold the minimap to glide.
• Tab cycles between your buildings.
• Shift+Click keeps placing the same building (Quick Build).
• HUD buttons toggle health bars and floating damage numbers.