How to play claim.io: how does the land grab work?

claim.io is a free multiplayer land-grab game you play in the browser. You are a glossy cube on a 64 by 64 grid, and you never stop moving. Every loop you draw out of your land and back again claims everything inside it.

No download, no account, no app. It runs on a phone, and solo mode keeps working with the network switched off.

The goal, in one sentence

Own the biggest share of the map you can before someone cuts you down.

Steering

Swipe anywhere on the board to turn. A long swipe can make several turns: every 16 pixels of travel in a new direction is another turn.
On a keyboard, use the arrow keys or WASD.
In settings you can switch on tap to turn: a tap on the left half of the board turns you counter-clockwise, a tap on the right half clockwise.
You move one cell every tick, eight ticks a second, and you never stop.
Turns queue up, two at most, and one is used per tick, so a quick right-then-down lands as a clean corner.
You can never turn straight back on yourself. A 180° turn is ignored.

Your land and your trail

You start on a 5 by 5 block of your colour. Inside your land you are safe and leave nothing behind.

Step outside and you draw a trail in your colour. The trail is the risky part of the game: it stays on the board, and it is how other players knock you out.

Claiming land

Steer back into your own land while you have a trail and you claim:

The trail itself becomes land.
Everything the loop encloses becomes land too.

“Enclosed” means anything that cannot reach the outside of your territory without crossing your land. A long thin trip claims little. A wide square claims a lot, but keeps you out for longer.

Enclosing other players’ land

A loop claims everything inside it, whoever owned it. If you wrap your trail around part of a rival’s land and close it, that land is yours. Wrap around all of it and the rival has no land left, which knocks them out, and the kill is yours.

Every way to be knocked out

Your trail is cut. Anyone who moves onto your trail while you are out knocks you out, and they get the kill.
You cross your own trail. Running into your own trail is a knockout too. Plan loops that do not fold back on themselves.
You hit the wall. The red border is the edge of the map.
A head-on crash. See below.
You lose all your land. If someone encloses every cell you own, you are out.

When you are knocked out, your land fades back to neutral and your trail disappears.

Head-on crashes

When two players move into the same cell in the same tick, or swap cells, it is a head-on crash. Each player who is not heading into its own land is knocked out. If both are outside, both go. If you are steering back into your own land, you survive and the other player does not.

Danger

While you are out, the game watches for rivals near your trail. When one is within five cells you hear a heartbeat, your trail pulses red and the message reads “danger · get back to your land”. That is your cue to head home.

Bots

Bots plan L-shaped loops out of their land and turn for home when a rival gets close or the loop is done. The more aggressive ones hunt any trail they can reach.

easy: five careful bots that mostly stay home.
medium: seven bots. Some take big loops, and a few will come for your trail.
hard: nine bots that grab big land and chase any trail they can reach.

Online rooms

Online is the default whenever the game server is reachable. Quick match drops you into a room of up to ten players, and bots fill the empty seats so there are always at least eight on the map. When a real player joins, a bot leaves after its current life. Rooms run forever, and you spawn on free land.

Pick a nickname of up to 12 characters. Only you see your own cube labelled “YOU”. If your connection drops, you have five seconds to reconnect and keep your cube.

Private rooms

Choose play with friends to open a room. You get a short code and a link to send. Up to ten players can join. Whoever opens the room picks the bot difficulty, or turns bots off.

The daily arena

The daily arena is a solo game on the same map with the same bots for everyone on a given UTC day, separately for each difficulty. Your first attempt each day is the scored one. Later attempts are practice.

Scoring

Your score is your peak share of the map in one life, as a percentage. The result screen also shows your kills, how long you stayed alive and your best rank.

Solo runs are replayed on the server from your turns before they reach the leaderboard, so a score can only come from a real game. Online results are scored by the server itself. There are boards for the daily arena, all-time solo, all-time online and weekly kills.

Tips

Square loops beat long lines. Area grows with the square of the side.
Keep trips short when someone is near. Your trail is only dangerous while it exists.
Cut, do not chase. Moving onto a trail is enough. You do not need to catch the cube.
Go home through your own land. In a head-on crash, the player entering its own land survives.

Frequently asked

How do you steer in claim.io? Swipe anywhere on the board, or use the arrow keys or WASD. Turns queue up to two at a time, and you can never turn straight back on yourself.

How do trails work? Leaving your land draws a trail behind you. It stays until you get back to your land or are knocked out, and anyone who touches it knocks you out.

How do you claim land? Steer back into your own land. Your trail and everything it encloses become yours.

Can you take another player’s land? Yes. A loop claims everything it encloses, whoever owned it. Enclose all of a player’s land and they are knocked out.

How many ways are there to be knocked out? Five: someone crosses your trail, you cross your own trail, you hit the wall, you crash head-on outside your land, or you lose all your land.

What happens in a head-on crash? Each player who is not entering its own land is knocked out. If both are outside their land, both go.

Are the other players bots? In solo and the daily arena, yes. Online, bots only fill empty seats so a room always has at least eight players, and they leave as real players join.

How do online rooms work? Quick match puts you in a room of up to ten players. Rooms never end, and you can join at any time and spawn on free land.

How do private rooms work? Choose play with friends to get a room code and a link. Up to ten players can join, and the host picks the bot difficulty or turns bots off.

Is the daily arena the same for everyone? Yes. Everyone gets the same map and bots per UTC day and difficulty. The first attempt each day is scored, and later ones are practice.

How is my score worked out? Your score is your peak share of the map in one life. Kills, time alive and your best rank are shown with it.

Is there a colour-blind mode? Yes. Switch on patterns and each player’s land gets its own mark, so you never have to tell players apart by colour alone.

Where claim.io sits

claim.io is the only real-time multiplayer game on onedge so far. If you like the nerve of a long trip out of your land, try the other games: graze pays you for near misses, updraft is a one-button cave flight, wreck is an endless run-and-gun, outbound clears a board of arrows, cornered is a turn-based escape, ricochet is a bank-shot puzzle, blast is a block puzzle, pour is a colour sort, tint mixes colours, filter is a face deduction game, bridge is a hex connection game, closure is a line-drawing duel against a bot, overload is a grid duel against a bot, and deadband is a test of steady hands.

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