STICKFIRE : Battle Ground

STICKFIRE: Battle Ground is a fast 2D arena shooter you can be playing ten seconds from now. No tutorial, no downloads to sit through, no lobby to decorate — press PLAY and you are in a five-minute firefight. EIGHT FIGHTERS. ONE ARENA. FIVE MINUTES. Every match is eight stick figures in a tight arena on a five-minute clock. First to 15 kills takes it. If the clock runs out with the lead shared, the match goes to sudden death and the next clean kill ends it. THREE WAYS TO FIGHT • DEATHMATCH — everyone for themselves. 15 kills wins. • GUN GAME — every kill swaps your weapon. Climb the whole ladder to win it outright. • 4v4 TEAMS — blue against red, 30 kills, no friendly fire. SIX ARENAS, AND NONE OF THEM PLAY THE SAME MESA is wide open with long sight lines and big flanks. SPIRE is nine levels stacked in a tower, where every fight is above or below you. CRATER sinks into a bowl you have to climb out of. SPAN hangs a solid deck over the floor, so there is a fight on top and a fight underneath. TERRACE gives one half the high ground. ATOLL fills the middle with a reef nobody can see across. TWENTY WEAPONS, FIVE TIERS Sidearms, sprays, rifles, marksman rifles and a handful of exotics. The expensive guns are narrower rather than simply stronger — a railgun rewards a steady hand, a shotgun forgives one. Every gun is unlocked with coins you earn by playing. TEN SHIELDS A shield is a second health pool that soaks a share of every hit and spends itself doing it. The free one absorbs a quarter; the best absorbs four fifths of everything and more than doubles what you can take. They are visible on your fighter, and the top one is worth seeing. THREE CLASSES STRIKER blinks 260 units along your aim, straight through a wall if the wall is thin enough. MEDIC heals. GUARDIAN throws up a shield. Same health, same speed — the class is one button that changes what you can get away with. KILL CAM ON EVERY DEATH When somebody drops you, the last two seconds are replayed with both of you in frame, so you can see exactly how they did it instead of guessing. CLANS Found one for 200 coins, take a 2-4 letter tag, and wear it in front of your name everywhere in the game. Owners set the door: open to anyone, applications only, or closed — and a minimum rank if they want one. Clans have their own weekly ladder. DAILY CHALLENGES AND A WEEKLY LADDER Three challenges a day, fresh at midnight, plus coins just for showing up. The weekly board pays the top ten in coins at reset. PLAY WITH FRIENDS Open a private room, share the four-letter code, and only the people with it can get in. BUILT FOR A PHONE Landscape, two thumbs, no virtual keyboard and no menus to fight. Left thumb moves and flicks to jump, right thumb aims and fires at the outer ring. It runs in a browser too, on the same account. NO ACCOUNT NEEDED TO START Press play and you are in. Sign up later with an email if you want your coins, guns and rank to follow you to your next device — everything you earned as a guest comes with you. Coins are earned by playing. They can also be bought if you would rather not wait, and nothing in the game is locked behind buying them.