Battleblobs - Free Battleship-Style Naval Game: 1v1 or Multiplayer Online

Battleship-Style Online: Battleblobs, a Free 1v1 Naval Grid Game

Battleblobs is a free Battleship-style game played on a 10x10 grid in your browser, or on any size from 7x7 to 15x15. Place a fleet of five ships on your hidden board, take turns calling shot coordinates at the opponent's grid, and the first player to sink the entire enemy fleet wins. The default game is a 1v1 head-to-head, the classic Battleship format, and a room can hold up to 200 players when you want a bigger game.

This is the same fleet-placement and call-shots loop the original boxed Battleship game has used since the 1960s, with a few features that only an online version can ship: a single-link friend invite, a 12-second per-turn clock so games run quickly, and rooms for up to 200 players. Free to play, browser-only, no installer.

Multiplayer 1v1 Battleship-Style Online With Friends

Inviting a friend is one URL away. Open a room from the lobby, then grab the URL from the browser tab and send it. Your opponent pastes the link into a tab on their end and lands in the same room as a guest player; no signup required. The 1v1 default is the format most people mean when they search "battleship online with friends": one fleet against another, hidden boards, alternating turns, last fleet floating wins.

A room you make for friends can hold up to 200 players. With three or more players left, everyone fires on the same turn, each at the next player in line who still has ships. Once only two players are left, they take turns. A player is out once their whole fleet is sunk, and the last player with ships left wins.

For solo practice, add bots to your room. There are six bot levels, from Easy to Grandmaster. The host picks one level, and every bot plays at it. An Easy bot fires at random, so it's a good way to learn fleet placement and the turn order before a friend match.

Turn Timer, Fleet, and Power-Ups

Battleblobs sticks close to the original Battleship rule set, with crates of weapons on top:

• Turn timer. Each turn has a 12-second clock. If it runs out before you fire, a random shot is fired for you, so a slow opponent can't hold the room hostage.
• Fire again on a hit. Fire Again on Hit is off by default, so every shot passes the turn, like in the boxed game. The host can turn it on in the room settings or the Play Bots options. With it on, when your shot hits a ship, you fire again, and a miss passes the turn. A good guess can turn into a streak that sinks a ship in one go. A random shot from a clock that ran out never earns another turn. With three or more players left, everyone fires at once, so it only matters once two are left. A game with it on doesn't change your Elo rating.
• Fleet and board size. Every match uses the standard 5-ship fleet. The board is 10x10 unless the host picks another size, from 7x7 to 15x15, in the room settings or the Play Bots options. On a 7x7 board there's little open water, so games are quick. On a 15x15 board the ships take much longer to find. A game on any size other than 10x10 doesn't change your Elo rating.
• Power-ups. Power-ups are on by default. Crates float on open water on every board: five each when the shooting starts, and more as the game goes on. The host can pick from 1 to 10 crates a sea in the room settings. You can see the crates on your own sea, but your rival's stay hidden until a shot lands on one or the game ends. A crate only sits on water, so finding one means that shot missed, but your next shot uses the weapon inside. The host can turn power-ups off in the room settings, and then every shot hits one square, like in the boxed game.

There are four weapons a crate can hold:

• Big Bomb. Hits the square you aim at and the four squares next to it.
• Torpedo. Hits every square in the row you aim at.
• Missile Rain. Hits the square you aim at and 4 random squares nobody has shot at yet.
• Mega Bomb. Hits the square you aim at and the 8 squares around it. It's the rarest of the four.

A weapon that lands on another crate takes that crate too, so one lucky Torpedo can give you two weapons in a row.

How to Play Battleship-Style

Battleblobs uses the classic Battleship rule set:

1. Fleet placement. Each player places five ships on a hidden grid, 10x10 unless the room picked another size. Ships occupy one row or column of cells (no diagonals, no overlaps). The standard fleet has ships of sizes 5, 4, 3, 3, and 2 — an aircraft carrier, a battleship, two cruisers/submarines, and a destroyer in tabletop terms. Hit Ready when your fleet is placed.

2. Alternating shots. On your turn, click a cell on the opponent's grid to fire a shot at it. The opponent's cell shows one of two outcomes: Hit (the shot lands on a ship square) or Miss (the shot lands on water). Both players see the result as a mark on the board, so anyone watching the room can follow the game.

3. Crates and weapons. With power-ups on, a shot that lands on a hidden crate gets you its weapon. Your next shot uses it, and the squares it will hit light up under your pointer before you click. The weapon you hold shows next to your ships as "Next shot".

4. Sinking ships. Once every cell of a ship has been hit, the ship is sunk. The opponent's grid marks the ship's location publicly, so you know the shape and orientation of one ship in the enemy fleet from that point onward.

5. Win condition. Sink every ship in the opposing fleet to win the game. In a 1v1 room, this ends the match. In a bigger room, you fire at the next player in line, a player is out once their fleet is sunk, and the last player with ships left wins. When the game ends, every fleet and every crate nobody found is shown, so you can see where the winner's last ships were hiding and how close your shots came to their crates.

The shot grid has 9 columns and 9 rows, with no letters or numbers on the edges. On a computer, the board highlights the cell under your pointer before you click, so you can check your aim before you fire. A click fires at once, so check before you click.

Strategy: Fleet Placement and Search Patterns

Battleship-style games reward two distinct skills — defensive placement and offensive search — and most matches are decided by who's better at the second skill, not the first.

Avoid the edges and the center on placement. The most common new-player error is hugging the edge of the board with one or two ships. Edge placements are intuitive (they feel hidden) but actually limit the placement-uncertainty advantage; an opponent who checks the outside rows and columns first sees a higher hit rate against an edge-loaded fleet. Conversely, packing every ship into the center is also a mistake — center cells get probed earliest. The placement equilibrium is roughly two ships near the edges, two in the middle bands, and one offset from anywhere predictable.

Don't place ships adjacent to each other. Putting two ships side-by-side means a single hit on the boundary cell will probably propagate into both ships through the standard hunt-mode follow-up shots. Leave a one-cell buffer between ships so a probe on one doesn't expose the other.

Search in a checkerboard pattern. The strongest first-stage search pattern is a checkerboard — call cells of one color (every other cell on a black-and-white grid) until the first hit. This guarantees you'll catch a 2-cell ship within at most 41 calls, since no 2-long ship can hide entirely on cells of one color. Random-guessing newer players spend twice as many turns finding ships they could have located with a structured pattern.

Shift to hunt mode on the first hit. As soon as a Hit lands, abandon the checkerboard and call the four orthogonally-adjacent cells in turn until a second hit confirms the ship's orientation, then walk along the orientation until the ship sinks. The pivot from search-mode to hunt-mode is the biggest single-decision skill check in a Battleship-style game.

Track what's already been sunk. Keep a running mental note of which ship sizes have been sunk and which haven't. Once the 5-cell carrier and the 4-cell battleship are both gone, every remaining ship is 2 or 3 cells long, which dramatically tightens the hunt pattern on a fresh hit.

Leaderboards, Achievements, and Cosmetics

Battleblobs is currently in alpha. The 1v1 game and rooms of up to 200 players are fully playable, the rule engine is stable, and friend rooms run on the same multiplayer infrastructure the rest of Foony uses. The Battleblobs leaderboards already rank players by XP, public games played, and Elo, and Battleblobs achievements are still in development. Two extra Battleblobs ships can be bought in the shop: the Toybox Fleet with coins and the Imperial Fleet with gems. The grid background is default-only for now.

Cross-game cosmetics from Battleblobs already drop into the rest of Foony's catalog: the Battleblob Screamer mount, for example, is a TypeRoyale mount that drops in TypeRoyale rooms once your Battleblobs level reaches 30. So a few games of Battleblobs builds toward unlocks elsewhere on the site even before the local catalog ships.

Battleblobs vs Hasbro's Battleship vs Sea Battle Online

The naval-grid genre splits across three reference points:

• Battleblobs (Foony). Browser-native Battleship-style game on a 10x10 grid (or any size from 7x7 to 15x15) with the standard 5-ship fleet, plus crates of bombs and torpedoes, a 12-second turn clock, and rooms for up to 200 players. Free, no install. Currently in alpha.
• Hasbro Battleship® (boxed tabletop). The 1967 Milton Bradley / Hasbro original. Identical placement and call-shots loop on a physical pegboard. The reference point everyone remembers from childhood. Battleship® is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc.; Battleblobs is an independent Battleship-style game and is not affiliated with Hasbro.
• Sea Battle / Naval Battle (online genre). Several free websites ship a digital Battleship-style game under various names. Most are 1v1 only, while a Battleblobs room can hold up to 200 players.

If you grew up playing the boxed game and want a no-friction online version with one friend, the 1v1 default is the closest match. For a club, classroom, or Discord server, everyone can play in one room of up to 200 players, and the last player with ships left wins.