Turf.

How to play Turf

1. Choose a mode. Your first round starts with a short coach that walks you through your first loop. A three-second countdown lets you find your gardener: in landscape your home starts on the left, and on a phone held upright the board turns so your home sits at the bottom.
2. Move with the arrow keys or W A S D. On a touch screen, put a finger anywhere on the board and drag toward a direction; a small stick appears under your finger. With the default Hold setting you stop when you let go. Glide keeps you walking until you tap or press Space.
3. Leave your colour to start a thread, turn, and come back to any tile you own. The thread and every sealed space inside it become your land. Water, beds, the rim and rival home patches always stay outside.
4. Cross a rival thread to snip it and send that gardener home. Keep your own loops short when a rival is near: your thread glows as a warning, and a red marker shows when a computer is hunting you.
5. Pick up seed packets for a burst of speed, a guarded thread or an instant patch of land. Watch the clock, your percentage and the coloured bar that shows every gardener’s share of the garden.
6. When the round ends, read your stars, place, experience and territory chart, then play again, go to the next stage or change the setup. Press P or Esc, or the pause button, for a break.

Make your move

About Turf

Turf is a territory game played on a stitched felt garden. You start on a small protected patch in your colour. Step off it and you leave a thread behind you. Come back to any tile of your colour and the thread becomes land, along with every space it seals off from the rim, water and planted beds. The gardener with the most land when the clock ends wins. Owning 60 percent of the garden ends the round early as a landslide. A tie at the top is a draw, not a coin toss.

The risk is the thread. Anyone who crosses it, including you, snips it and sends its owner back home. In the classic rules a snip also clears the land that gardener grew since the round began, while the 25 home tiles stay protected. Stepping straight back along your own thread is simply ignored, so a mistimed reversal will not end your run. A returning gardener gets a short shield, and a thread under a shield or a Hedge packet cannot be snipped at all, so nobody is snipped the instant they come home.

The Garden Tour has 24 stages across eight gardens. Each stage names its rule set, rivals and length, and gives three stars: win the round, finish above a territory target, and a bonus goal such as snipping two threads, never getting snipped, closing a 40-tile loop or collecting seed packets. Winning a stage opens the next one and reaching a garden opens it for Quick match. Every stage was played by a same-speed computer pilot during development, and each of the 72 stars was earned that way, so every goal is reachable without special tricks.

Quick match lets you choose the garden, one to five rivals, the computer level (Chill, Fair or Sharp), the rules and the length. Gentle rules only cost the thread when you are snipped. Overgrowth makes the hedge creep in one ring every 15 seconds. Survival gives everyone three sprouts, and the last gardener standing wins. Takeover is a race to half the garden. The Daily garden is a new layout with its own rules and rivals each day, the same for every player, with a streak and a copyable result line.

Rivals have visible personalities. Steady gardeners loop at a normal size, Careful ones keep loops small, Hunters look for exposed threads, and Greedy ones take long, risky routes. They see the same board you see and never read your input. A computer only chases a thread it can reach before its owner gets home, never more than one hunts you at a time, and a hunter shows a red marker above its head. Your own thread glows when a rival is close enough to reach it.

Seed packets appear on neutral ground in most modes. Dash makes you move faster for a few seconds. Hedge guards your thread so nobody can snip it. Bloom plants a small patch of land where you pick it up, and if you are out on a thread when you grab it, your loop closes right there. Computers can collect packets too. The Locker holds cosmetic hats and thread stitches you earn by levelling up and collecting tour stars. Nothing you unlock changes speed or strength.

A little help for your next high score

• Start with loops a few tiles out from your patch. A loop four tiles out and four across closes in about two seconds and claims around twenty tiles.
• Loop along the rim or water with your thread between the new ground and the edge; a loop that leaves an open gap to the edge only claims the thread itself.
• When your thread glows, head home by the shortest safe path rather than finishing the shape. A small claim beats a snip.
• Hunters only chase threads they can reach first. Stay close to your colour while one shows a red marker, then expand on the far side.
• A Bloom packet out in the open is a free landing spot for a long loop, and a Hedge packet makes a big loop safe for a few seconds.
• In Survival every snip costs a sprout. Take small, quick loops early and save the big ones for when rivals are busy with each other.

Good questions