How to play Inkfield — Territory Capture

Point where you want to go and your line follows. Get back to your own ground to claim everything it circled — and keep away from every line on the field, including your own.

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Inkfield is a territory game with one rule doing all the work: your own line can kill you, and it is the only thing you own that can.

Ground, and being safe on it

You start on a small square of ground. Standing on ground you own, you are untouchable and you leave no mark — you can wander around inside your own territory indefinitely and nothing will happen to you, good or bad.

The moment you step off it, you begin drawing. Every cell you cross is added to a line trailing behind you, and that line stays on the board until you either get home or die.

Claiming

Return to any cell you own while carrying a line, and the claim resolves: the line itself becomes yours, and so does everything it enclosed.

"Enclosed" is decided the honest way, by asking what the outside cannot reach. The field is flooded from its edges through everything that is not yours, and whatever the flood cannot get to is inside your loop. That matters because loops are not neat: a line that doubles back, or one that closes around a rival's territory, still has a well-defined inside, and this is how the game finds it.

The consequence worth knowing is that you do not have to draw a clean circle. You have to separate a region from the edge of the board. A line drawn across a corner claims the corner. A line drawn from one part of your own ground to another part of it claims everything between.

Dying

Three things end a round.

Walking into your own line. This is the mistake the game is built around, and it is the one that catches people who turn too tightly on the way back.

Walking off the board while you are drawing. On your own ground the edge simply stops you; out on a line, it kills you.

A rival crossing your line. This works in both directions and it is symmetrical — the rivals are not immune to anything you are subject to. They trap themselves, they cut each other, and they can be cut by you.

When anyone dies, everything they held is released back to the field.

The rivals

Three of them, and they are not decoration. One takes short, safe loops close to home. One overreaches, which makes it both the biggest threat to the field and the easiest to cut. The third watches for a line long enough to be worth cutting and comes for it, but only when it is already close — it will not cross the board to find you.

They run the same rules you do. A rival on its own ground is as safe as you are on yours.

Speed, and why you have it

You move faster than the rivals. This is not flavour, it is the balance of the whole game. Over a three-minute round with several rivals drawing at once, the chance that somebody eventually strays across your line approaches one no matter how carefully you play. Being quicker is what converts that certainty into something you can manage: you can finish a loop before the rival arriving from the left gets to it, and you can chase down a line that somebody else has left hanging.

The round

A round lasts three minutes. If you are still drawing at the end, the share of the field you hold is your score and the round is a win. Take a fifth of the field before that and it ends early.

A fifth is deliberately not a half. Half of a field this size is more than any measured player has ever held, and a target nobody reaches is the same as no target at all -- it leaves dying as the only way a round can end, which makes every round a loss.

A round without an end would mean the only way out is dying, which would make every round a loss and leave a good player nothing to reach.

Seeds

The rivals' starting positions and their behaviour are dealt from a seed, and a shared round gives the person you send it to the same opening you had.

Controls

Point at where you want to go and hold. You cannot turn straight back into your own line.

Touch

Press anywhere on the field and hold. You head towards your finger and keep re-aiming as you move it.
Point back along your own line and you turn off it rather than nothing happening.

Keyboard

Arrow keys or W A S D turn, and override pointing.

Strategy tips

Draw along the edge of ground you already own. A loop that starts and ends against your own border is short, and short loops are the ones you survive.
Never turn back toward the line you came out on. Almost every self-inflicted death is a tight turn made on the way home, into the outbound line the player had forgotten was there.
Claim corners early. A line across a corner encloses a large area for very little drawing, because two sides of the region are the board edge.
Watch the rival that overreaches. It leaves long lines lying across the field, and cutting one is both free territory and one fewer rival for a while.
When a rival comes at you while you are out, head for the nearest ground you own rather than finishing the loop. A small claim beats a large one you do not live to collect.
Use your speed deliberately. You are quicker than they are, so a race to a line is one you usually win — but only if you start it knowing that.
Do not draw through the middle of the board early. A long line across open ground is the easiest thing on the field to cut, and it claims nothing until you get home.
After a rival dies its ground is released, so the space it held becomes the cheapest territory on the board. Take it before it respawns.
If your territory has a ragged edge, spend a loop straightening it. A smooth border makes every future loop shorter and gives you more places to come home to.