Sketched Earth is what happens if you take the artillery games people used to play on graphing calculators and give them multiplayer and make them look like someone's physics notebook. You and up to five other people get tanks on randomly generated terrain — hills, craters, whatever the map decided to do — and take turns shooting at each other while the wind tries to ruin your carefully planned arc. The terrain craters and collapses as the match goes on, so the geography you started with isn't what you're dealing with by round three. Whoever's still alive at the end of each stage walks away with cash, you blow it in the shop on weapons or a shield or a parachute if you keep falling off things, and whoever wins the most stages wins the whole match. It's not a complicated game. It's just really satisfying when someone's been hiding behind the same hill for four turns and you finally arc one over.
| ← → | Adjust aim angle |
| ↑ ↓ | Adjust power |
| Space | Fire / use item |
| Tab | Cycle to next weapon |
| 1 – 0 | Select slot by position |
| F | Arm countermeasure flare (costs your turn) |
| P | Arm parachute (costs your turn) |
| Drag screen edge | Scroll camera |
| D-pad (bottom-left) | Adjust aim angle and power |
| FIRE button | Fire selected weapon or use item |
| Tap a slot | Select weapon or item |
| Two-finger swipe | Scroll camera |
Before the match and between every stage, everyone gets a shopping window. You start with $900. Win stages, deal damage, stay alive — you earn more. Spend it on weapons and equipment, or save it for later. The timer runs whether you're ready or not.
After each stage you earn tokens based on how you did — one for showing up, more for winning, dealing damage, getting kills, or barely surviving. Between stages you spend tokens on special weapons that aren't in the regular shop: homing bees, a terrain-following pigeon, a wandering stick figure, a two-round eclipse, a decoy tank, a sandbag bunker. Each costs one to three tokens. None of them are subtle.
Win more stages than everyone else. That's the whole game. The cash is just for keeping things interesting between rounds.
Instead of firing, any player can offer peace. If everyone accepts, the stage ends early and all players pocket a cash bonus — one that grows the longer the stage has gone on. It's a legitimate strategy. It's also bait, depending on who's offering.
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