How to play
- Goal
- Ward the share of the field named at the top of the screen (65% in the first march, 80% in the last) by fencing land off from the wisps.
- How it ends
- The ward is raised the moment that share is reached; the run is lost when the third line is broken or at dusk, three minutes in.
- Record
- For every ward, the ten best scores and the ten fastest raisings, each proved by replaying the run.
- Hold an arrow key (or WASD), or swipe, to walk along the gold warded edge. At the mist's edge you stop; press or swipe again to step out, and you draw a line of light.
- Out in the mist you never stop. Walk the line back onto warded land and it closes: every part of the mist with no wisp left in it is warded, and the painting shows there.
- A wisp that touches your open line breaks it, and so does crossing it yourself; a hound that reaches you on warded land costs a line too. Ward the share named at the top before the third break and before dusk at 3:00.
Controls
| Arrows · WASD (hold) | Walk that way; let go to stand still on warded land |
|---|---|
| Swipe | Walk the way you swipe, until a tap |
| Tap · Space | Stand still (on warded land) |
| P · Escape | Pause (the run then counts as practice) |
| R · ↻ | Start the ward over |
The 96 paintings, the effect sprites and the sounds come from the Morass warehouse; the music, "The Ward Line", was composed for this game. The simulation uses whole numbers only and a run is just the moves you made, so every browser plays it back identically and the records worker re-plays each one before it enters a Top 10. Your bests stay in this browser under morass.wardline.v1. A ward's painting is fetched when you open that ward. No ads or analytics run inside the game.
Watch how to play
About Wardline
A territory game in the line of Qix and Xonix, set among the ward-lines of the Concord. A field lies under mist, with loose wisps drifting in it. You carry a lantern along the warded edge, step out into the mist drawing a line of light, and walk it back to warded ground. The side of your line that no wisp is left in is warded, the mist lifts off it, and a piece of a painting shows.
A wisp that touches an open line breaks it, and the third broken line ends the run, so every cut is a wager: a small corner is safe and worth little, while one long cut across the field can be worth four times as much a cell. Shut a wisp into a pocket of thirty cells or fewer and it is snuffed. Later marches add glide-wisps that sweep a row, weave-wisps that turn (and point where first), seekers that lean toward an open line, and ash-hounds that run the edge of the mist so that standing still is no longer safe.
There are 96 wards in eight marches, each with its own painting to bring out of the dark. Every ward was raised by a planning bot before it shipped, and each keeps two Top 10s, best score and fastest raising; every run on them is re-played by the site before it is ranked.
