How to play Artillery

The goal

Destroy the computer’s tank before it destroys yours. Each tank starts with 100 health.

Before a new game, choose how well the computer plays: Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert. Then pick one of Earth’s ten stages. Restart stage asks again, and Settings changes it for your next game.

Your turn

Aim with the Angle and Power arrows, or drag on the sky and pull back like a slingshot. The arc shows where the shell starts. Then tap Fire.

Move drives your tank left or right and burns fuel. You start each stage with 250, nearly five tank lengths on the flat; climbing burns up to twice as much, going downhill half.

Moving, aiming and choosing a weapon don’t end your turn; Fire does.

You can stop at any time. Your game is saved as you play, and Play brings you back to the same turn, the last shot’s crater outlined.

Weapons

Shell never runs out. Every other weapon is counted, and when one runs out you’re back to Shell. You start with two Big shots, two Triples, a Shield and a parachute.

Attack weapons hit the other tank. Big shot: a bigger blast. Triple: three small shells at once. Roller: rolls on along the ground, downhill first. Bouncer: bounces twice, then bursts. Cluster: splits into five at the top of its arc. Napalm: runs downhill, and a tank it reaches burns for two more turns.

Earth weapons shape the ground and do no damage. Digger: bores a tunnel, and the ground above it falls in. Dirt ball: heaps up a mound that can bury a tank. Dirt wall: a tall wall of earth. Ramp: a slope you can drive up.

Defend items go on your own tank instead of a shot: choose one, then tap Use. Shield: takes the next 30 damage, for up to three of the computer’s turns. Repair: gives back 20 health, twice a stage at most. Dig in: a pit where anything short of a direct hit does half damage, until you drive.

A buried tank’s Fire digs it out instead of shooting. Move digs it out too, for 20 fuel, and keeps your turn.

The world

Blasts carve craters in the ground and holes in a cave roof. Wind pushes shells sideways. Shells splash harmlessly in water and pop balloons in the sky.

A tank whose ground is blasted away falls. A long fall hurts, unless you have a parachute: it opens by itself.

A blast also shoves any tank near it along the ground, away from the blast: the closer it lands, the farther the tank slides. A steep rise or the other tank stops it, but a ledge doesn’t, and a tank shoved over one falls. So the same shot rarely lands twice, and a near miss can push you off a cliff.

Where water can flood, a tank under it loses health at the end of each of its turns.

At Victoria Falls the river seeps into any crater dug below it. A tank that ends up in the water is swept away, and the other side wins.

At Zhangjiajie each tank’s pillar has a cracked band partway down. One blast on it and the top falls into the valley, tank and all: bring down the computer’s and you win.

At Cappadocia a cracked slab of roof hangs over each tank. Hit the computer’s and the roof comes down on it: you win. “On the roof” shows under your plate while your aim would hit it.

Now and then the land moves on its own: snow slides, a river rises, rocks fall. Each is warned first, on the land and under the plates, so you can drive clear.

The shop

Every finished game earns points: the damage you dealt, plus 25 for a win. Points come only from playing; they’re never sold.

Next stage and Try again open the shop. Spend points on any weapon but Shell, on parachutes, and on fuel, 50 more for 20 points. Until you tap Start stage, anything you just bought can go back for its full price.

What you have left at the end of a game carries on to your next one; what you used is gone. Bought fuel burns after the stage’s free 250, so what’s left of it carries on too.