About Dot Conquest

The game in one minute

You command armies of dots on a hex map. Cities make dots by themselves. You pick up dots with a lasso and send the whole group with a tap or a click. A city's capture ring fills while your dots stand beside it. Dots paint the land they cross, and that land has to stay connected to one of your cities, or the dots standing on it slowly lose health.

Close a pocket of enemy land with your own and it flips to you. On a countdown that everyone can see, a Council pauses the battle and you pick one of three cards. Late in a match a siege phase begins, which makes cities fall faster so that a stalemate ends. You win by owning every city or most of the map.

What it leaves out, on purpose

• No fog of war: the whole map and every dot are visible to every side.
• No gold or other resource to manage. What speeds a side's Councils is drawn on the map.
• No morale and no automatic retreat. Dots do what you ordered.
• No hidden bonuses. What a card does is written on the card.

Modes

• Campaign. 100 levels in 10 worlds: Greenfields, Riverlands, Council Hills, Stonepass, Frontier, Dunes, Marshes, Frostline, Isles and The Crown. Each level has three stars. Nine of the levels are set pieces that change how you command.
• Gauntlet. A run of 30 battles in 3 acts, saved after each battle. You start with a Doctrine, draft cards into a build of 10 slots, and meet a boss at the end of each act: The Charge, The Hatcheries, The Onslaught, Three Acts or The Mirror. It opens once you have cleared 10 campaign levels.
• Daily. Today's Battle is the same battle for everyone on that day. Later a Rematch and a Practice card join it. There are no streaks to keep and no leaderboard.
• Skirmish. A battle you set up yourself against 1 to 7 AI rivals, at three difficulties, on six map sizes, alone or in teams.
• Tutorial. Twelve short drills, and a how-to-play reference that is generated from the game's own rules.

Units and generals

There are five kinds of dot: Light, Heavy, Scout, Siege and Medic. Each is strong against some kinds and weak against others. Three of them act by themselves: the Siege shells a crowd, the Medic heals in a burst, and the Heavy charges an enemy that comes near.

The AI sides are led by generals with their own habits: the Brawler, the Warden, the Hive, the Surveyor, the Fox, the Banker, the Raider and the Marshal.

Where it stands today

• The game is not released and is not on any store. It is still changing.
• 25 of the 100 campaign levels are not yet reliably winnable. All of them are in Worlds 3 to 10.
• So far only its maker has played it. That is what the browser version and the feedback form are for.

What is planned

• Phones first: Android and iPhone, free to play, with cosmetics, a supporter pack and campaign boosts from level 23. No ads, no loot boxes and no energy timers. Every level is meant to be winnable without a boost.
• A PC version later, at a one-time price, with nothing more to buy inside it.
• The browser version is the full game and is free. It has no shop.