Battleship

How to play Battleship

1. Hide your fleet on the 10×10 grid: carrier (5), battleship (4), cruiser (3), submarine (3), destroyer (2). Ships can't touch — not even corners.
2. Take turns calling shots by tapping the enemy grid. A pencil dot means miss; a red X means hit.
3. A hit fires again — only a miss passes the turn. Chain hit-hit-sunk and the room hears about it.
4. Sink a ship and the water around it is provably empty — the pad shades it in for you, the classic deduction.
5. Sink all five ships (17 squares) before they sink yours. On one phone, a handover screen keeps both fleets secret; on two, the duel referees itself live.

A little background

Battleship started as a pencil-and-paper game around the First World War — French players knew it as bataille navale, Russians as sea battle — and printed pads like 1931's "Salvo" sold it by the million long before Milton Bradley's 1967 plastic version (now Hasbro's) added the pegs and the slam of a carrier going down. Two grids, a secret fleet, and a friend across the table is all it ever needed — which is why this version looks like the pad, not the pegboard.

Play pass & play on one phone — place your ships, hand it over, and the no-peek screen keeps every fleet secret — or start a duel: two devices, a four-letter room code you can shout across the house, and every shot landing live on the other screen. Free, no ads, no account — and pass & play works offline.