Formula Warriors
Arithmetic, played as tactics. A squad walks down a lane, gates stand in the way with numbers written on them, and every gate you take rewrites how many of you come out the other side.
- Players
- One
- Tiers
- Beginner · Intermediate · Advanced · Expert · Insane
- Controls
- Pointer only — tap or click
- A level takes
- Under a minute
- Runs on
- Any current browser
The lane, the gates, the squad
Your squad advances. Ahead of it the lane splits, and each branch is a gate carrying an operation. One of them will make the squad larger. The other, reliably, will not. You pick a side, the arithmetic is applied to everyone who walks through, and the lane carries on to the next split with whatever you have left.
That is the entire ruleset, and it is enough, because the numbers are not the problem — the order is. A gate that multiplies is worth a great deal early, when it is multiplying a squad you have not lost yet, and worth very little at the end. A gate that adds is a flat favour whenever you take it. Reading a lane means reading it backwards from the finish, and there is rarely time to do that properly.
Five tiers, and they are not decorative
The title screen offers Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert and Insane. They are not the same lanes at different speeds. Higher tiers give you less lane to think in, more splits per lane, and gates whose worst option is much worse.
Beginner exists to teach the reflex. Insane exists to prove the reflex was never the point. Most people find their level somewhere around Advanced and then spend a surprising amount of time there.
The game remembers which tier you last played and offers it again next time. Like every other bit of progress here, that is stored in your own browser and nowhere else.
Clearing, failing, and going again
Finish a lane with a squad still standing and the level clears, with Next Level waiting. Lose everyone and it is Game Over, with Retry in the same place your thumb already is. Either screen will also take you back to the tier list, and either can be shared.
Three habits that help
- Multiply first, add later. When the choice is genuinely close, taking the multiplier earlier in the lane compounds through everything that follows it.
- Look one gate past the one you are at. The gate in front of you is often a setup for the pair behind it, and the greedy answer to the first pair is regularly the wrong answer to both.
- A small squad is not a lost one. One good multiplier can rebuild an embarrassing position, so a bad first gate is not a reason to restart the level.
Why it is on a different address
Formula Warriors is published at formula-warriors.game5.app, which is where the studio's earlier work lives. It is the same people and it is not going anywhere — see Games for how the addresses fit together.