Duel a friend

A Duel is DANKGAME for two people: each of you has a hero, a town and an army on one shared map, you both play the same day at the same time, and the match ends in one battle between the two armies. It runs in the browser on a phone or a computer. Nothing to download, no account, no sign-up: you send a friend a link, and the duel starts when they open it.

Play DANKGAME On the title screen, press Duel, then Invite a friend.

What a Duel is

• Two heroes, one mirrored map. The map is 11×19 tiles. Its northern half is the southern half turned half a circle round the centre, so every lair, pile, chest, mine and dwelling on your half has a twin on your rival’s, holding the same thing at the same distance from their town. Across both halves there are 10 monster lairs, 4 mines, 4 dwellings, 3 chests and 10 piles of resources. The first player into the match starts in the south, the second in the north.
• Each picks a people. The Vale Host (led by the Commander) or the Peatholm (led by the Sedge Mother), each with its own town, fighters and starting army. Both players may bring the same people. The codex lists every fighter’s numbers.
• The same day, at the same time. Nobody waits for the other to finish a turn. Each day both heroes walk, pick up piles, open chests, flag mines and hire troops at once, each against a day ring (a countdown). Press End Day when you are done; the day turns when both have ended it, or when a ring runs out, which ends that player’s day exactly as End Day would. A slow or absent player never holds the match up. Each hero starts with 1000 gold and 12 movement a day.
• Lair fights have their own clock. Attack a lair and your day ring stops where it was. In the fight each of your stacks has a turn ring (when it runs out the stack Waits, or Braces if it already waited), and the whole fight has a bank; once the bank is spent, the rest of the fight is played on Auto from where it stands. Your rival’s day goes on meanwhile. Lose your whole army in a lair and you lose the duel.
• Two heroes on the same pile. If both take the same pile, chest or mine on the same day, the one with more movement left when he took it got there earlier in the day and keeps it; How to play has a worked example.
• The final battle. When one hero walks onto or next to the other, the final battle starts at once. If nobody has done so, it starts when day 12, the last day, turns. It is fought on a board of 8 by 10 tiles painted from the ground where it happens, with each side’s whole army and its hero. The army left standing wins the duel; after 40 rounds the army with more hit points left wins. A draw goes to the hero who was walked into after a meeting (attacking has to be worth it), and after the day limit to a side the duel’s seed fixed when the match was made.

The three speeds

Above Invite a friend sits a speed pick, like a chess time control. It sets every clock of the duel you start and nothing else: the map, the armies and every rule are the same at each speed. A friend duel is played at the speed picked when the code was made, whatever your friend has picked; the code screen, the shared link’s message and your friend’s first line in the duel all name it.

Worked example: at Standard the map part of a duel lasts at most 12 days of 60 seconds, 12 minutes. A lair fight pauses its player’s ring and can add at most 90 seconds of its own (4 full turn rings of 20 seconds), so with three lair fights between the two of you the map part lasts at most 16 min 30 s before the final battle, and usually much less, because most days end when both players press End Day. Blitz fits a whole map into 6 minutes; Slow gives 3 minutes a day for players who want to think.

How to invite a friend

1. Open dankgame.com and press Duel on the title screen. Pick your people and a speed.
2. Press Invite a friend. The game makes a private code of 6 characters and shows it large, with its link: https://dankgame.com/?duel=CODE. Codes never use I, L, O, 0 and 1, so they are easy to read aloud.
3. Send the link (Share link on a phone, Copy link elsewhere) or just read out the code. Opening the link joins your duel in one step. A friend who already has the game open presses Duel, then Join a code, and types it.
4. The duel starts the moment your friend joins. Online duels are played only on dankgame.com itself.

Playing the computer meanwhile

Press Play the computer in the same Duel panel for a practice duel: the same map, the same clocks at the speed you picked, and the same rules, played entirely in your browser with no match server involved, so it never waits on anyone. Under the button, Computer: Vale Host · Peatholm · Either picks the people the computer brings; Either, the default, is drawn from the duel’s seed, so a practice duel you come back to brings the same rival. It is a fair way to learn the map’s twin lairs and the clocks before you send a code.

If someone drops

If a player’s connection is lost, their hero holds still and the clocks keep running for them, ending their days and turns, so the match never stalls. After the time in the table (90 seconds at Standard) the computer takes that seat and plays it carefully: it never walks up to the other hero, so it never starts the final battle, and each day it keeps at least half the gold it began the day with. While the page stays open, a dropped connection reconnects by itself and takes the seat back at once. A player who closes the page is not replaced by the computer; their hero just holds still under the clocks. After the claim time (3 minutes away at Standard) the match server lets the other player claim the win, but the game has no button for that claim yet, so for now the duel goes on to a meeting or the day limit.

Limits, honestly

• A Duel is one map for now, always the same layout; the objects in it are drawn from the match seed.
• There is no ranking, chat or friends list: a Duel is between you and whoever has your code.
• A friend duel needs both players online for its whole length; a dropped player is covered as described above, not paused.

The full rules of every fight, Conquest and the Duel are on How to play.