How to play Ship It

Choose a problem, then bring your friends

Enter a name and choose an avatar to play as a guest. GitHub sign-in is optional and saves your player across devices. Create a private table and share its invite link or code. A table supports one to four players.

Choose from Web, Mobile, Data, AI, Security, Games, Dev Tools and Embedded. Mix categories and pick Light, Standard or Deep complexity. Each match generates a fresh problem; you choose the kind of challenge, rather than selecting a fixed scenario.

The host also chooses competitive or cooperative play, tactics, match length and a turn timer or untimed turns. Everyone marks ready. Before play begins, all participants read and acknowledge the same problem statement and constraints.

To meet someone new, opt into Online players. Guests and GitHub players can both appear there and send or accept a challenge. Review its categories, complexity and rules before accepting.

Your turn can contain several moves

1. Read the problem and the board’s open requirements.
2. Inspect your cards and choose a technology yourself.
3. Drag a card to a specific socket, paying its energy cost. You can also select a card and then select a socket using touch or keyboard.
4. Keep playing while you have energy and time. An Energy card or a paid redraw can help you continue.
5. Choose End turn when you are done. If the host enabled a timer, reaching zero ends your turn automatically.

Deploying a card does not end your turn. Reading help or inspecting a card does not pause a running timer. You can reopen the shared problem during the match.

Your hand, new cards and the discard pile

You start with 6 cards. At the start of your next turn, draw back to at least 6. If you already have 6 or 7 cards, draw one more. The maximum hand size is 8, so a full hand draws nothing. Cards you did not play stay in your hand.

Playing a card does not immediately refill its empty hand position. Your normal draw happens when your next turn begins.

Nothing useful in your hand?

Drag an unwanted card onto the Discard trash button. This spends 1 energy and exchanges that card for the next available card. You can also select a card and press Discard, or choose Redraw while inspecting it.

Your turn continues and your hand stays the same size. A replacement is not guaranteed to fit. The old card goes into the discard pile after you draw its replacement, so that exchange cannot immediately return the card you just discarded.

When the deck runs out, the discard pile is shuffled into a new deck. If both piles are empty, you cannot draw or exchange a card. You can always end your turn.

Energy pays for moves. Points measure your score.

Normally you start with 3 energy. Each new turn restores up to 3 energy, with a cap of 5; unused energy carries over up to that cap. Active events can change the refresh or cap, so check the visible energy rules.

An Energy card costs 0 and restores up to 2 energy without ending your turn. Drag it onto the energy bank or select it and use the energy action. You cannot use an Energy card when your energy is full.

Technology cards have a base energy cost. The chosen socket can add an event cost or require an earlier connection. Redrawing costs 1 energy. Spending energy does not subtract points.

A successful technology deployment earns the points printed on that socket. A rejected placement does not spend energy or remove your card. A Takeover can transfer a socket’s points to another player.

Read the requirement and build the connections

Hover or focus a socket to learn the kind of technology it needs. Hover or focus a card to learn about that technology. On touch, tap to inspect. These explanations help you reason; they do not reveal which card fits which socket.

Incoming connections are prerequisites: build those components first. A suitable card still needs enough energy and an available socket. Neutral existing components belong to the board, satisfy prerequisites and cannot be claimed or changed.

Tactics and events

If tactics are enabled, Guard can protect your own deployment, while Takeover can claim an eligible opponent’s deployment in competitive play. Check the card’s cost, ownership and protection rules before choosing a target.

Events can change deployment costs, energy, or availability of a socket. Their public descriptions explain what changed and any recovery or mitigation. A critical socket’s printed point value already includes its bonus.

Finish the build or win on points

In competitive play, the highest positive score wins. Equal top scores share the win; if every score is zero, there is no winner. You can win on points even if the architecture is unfinished.

In cooperative play, everyone wins by connecting every socket before the shared turn budget runs out. An unfinished build has no winner.

The match ends when the architecture is complete or the table uses its turn budget. Review the completed architecture, revisit your match history and replay, or generate a fresh problem in the same room.