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This page gives you a rough idea to help you get along with Hedgewars as a complete beginner. It doesn't explain everything, only the basics. Advanced information can be found throughout this wiki.

Learning the basics

Hedgewars comes with a simple tutorial.

From the main menu, head to the singleplayer menu and choose the training mode. Here you can find a few missions which teach you the basic controls and gameplay of the game. Begin with “Basic Movement Training” and hit “Start”. The game explains the rest to you. Continue with the other basic training missions to learn more.

After the training

After the training you might want to play the campaign “A Classic Fairytale”, but it is by no means neccessary to master the game. Here you lead your tribe of hedgehogs in a horrible war against cannibals as you slowly get to know about new weapons and utilites.

Note the campaign “A Space Adventure” is much harder and requires good skills with the rope.

Alternatively, you can of course jump right into multiplayer action, the choice is yours!

Multiplayer games

For online games, see also: Online features

Setup

Before you do anything, learn the controls, it's very important.

To actually play against other players, you can either play online or offline in hot-seat mode.

First, make sure you have enough teams ready. If not, you can add teams in the settings menu.

In the multiplayer page, you can select a map, add teams and change the game rules.

Click on a team to add it to the game, click on it again to remove it. Change the color of teams to put multiple teams into clan. Teams in the same clan (i.e. same color) will win or lose together. You can for example create a 2vs2 by adding 2 red teams and 2 blue teams.

Beginners should leave the style at “Normal”. The schemes and ammo selections select the game rules and initial weapons of the game.

If you you have become more experienced with Hedgewars, you can experiment with other schemes and later styles.

Basic gameplay

This section is a summary of: Rules of the game

The goal in a normal game of Hedgewars is to lead your team of hedgehogs to victory by destroying all enemy teams.

The game is turn-based. You are able to move through the landscape and fire one weapon per turn. Note that there are various weapons and tools which don't end your turn.

After you fired your weapon, you have a short retreat time (not for all weapons) and then your turn ends.
Then the next player continues, and so on. This goes on until only one clan (teams of same color) remains, winning the game.

If, for some reason, all hedgehogs die in one turn, the round ends in a draw.

The gameplay rules can be further altered by schemes and styles. The most important thing you need to know is that all important rules are displayed in the mission panel at the beginning of a game.

For the full rules, read: Rules of the game