Tanks

Tanks is a classic turn-based artillery game where you lob shells at rival tanks until only one is left standing. It comes from 2DPlay.com, it runs free in your browser with no download, and up to five players can share one keyboard. You set the angle, choose a weapon, and hope the wind behaves.

What Is Tanks?

Tanks is an old Flash artillery game, the sort that used to sit on every free games site back when browsers still needed a plugin to run it. 2DPlay.com published it back in the Flash era, and the recipe is pure Scorched Earth: turn-based tank duels on hills that crumble under your shells. There are three terrains with their own challenges, so a shot that works on open dunes can fail completely once you are fighting uphill. The game is small enough that it spread to portals everywhere, and it still plays fine today through browser emulation, which is the main reason people keep coming back to it.

Free browser play is the other draw. There is nothing to install, no account to make, and no one asking for a credit card, just a page with a canvas and a scoreboard. Any modern laptop will run it, and the controls fit on a keyboard, so it is a desktop friendly game rather than a phone game, though a tablet with a keyboard will do in a pinch.

How a Match of Tanks Works

Every player takes a turn, and a turn is short. You tweak the cannon angle, load up the power bar, check the wind reading, then fire. The shell arcs across the sky and lands wherever physics decides, which is usually not where you wanted it. Up to five tanks can play at once, and any of them can be handed to the computer, so one person can still run a full match alone.

The scoreboard in the corner tracks everyone by color, from Player 1 in black down to Player 5 in yellow. Between rounds you spend your cash in the weapon shop, which is where the game opens up. Plain shells get old fast, and the fancier ammo is a lot more fun. There is a Volcano bomb in the list, for example, and the crater it leaves behind is worth the price.

Damage carries over between rounds, so a lucky hit early can decide the whole match. If you grew up on Scorched Earth or lost lunch breaks to Pocket Tanks, this is the same itch. The pace is slower than a shooter, and that is the point. You watch, you plan, and you laugh when a shell clips a hill and drops onto your own tank instead.

Tanks Controls and the Top Panel

Almost everything you need lives in the top panel. The left side shows your tank and its ammo, the middle holds the angle cone, the power bar and the weapon selector, and the FIRE label sits right under the power bar. Arrow keys handle the basics: left and right move your tank along the hill, up and down change the cannon angle. Q and W flip through the weapons you already own.

Firing is a two step job. Page Up and Page Down set the fire power, and Space launches the shell, so you can dial a shot in gently or send it screaming across the map. A small wind arrow sits near your money, and it is very easy to ignore until a shell sails past the enemy and off the map. Check it before every shot. Low power lobs are underrated as well, since a soft shot is harder to spot coming and it saves the loud ammo for later rounds.

More Games Like Tanks

If the artillery formula grabs you, there are plenty of places to go next. Tank Trouble does the same trick with bouncy walls and friends crowded around one keyboard, Worms takes the idea and adds a full army of tools and jokes, and Pocket Tanks keeps things quick with one on one duels. Scorched Earth is the grandparent of all of them and still worth a look.