Game - Battleship

on Facebook, Battleship, currently at version 1.4.0.4 beta, allows you to place 5 ships, on a board of 8x8 squares. You can practice, or select opponents - either from your friend list or random. 

Battleship, like it's "real life" counterpart board-game, is turn-based. 
You place your 5 ships

Then you select which kind of game you want

Depending on your choice you may start a practice game where a bot will do the firing against you - which you'll see after you "tab" 

Bots seem to shoot 3 times. 
You have 3 shots, and if you accept a +1 by watching a commercial add. I have an add-blocker, so all I see is this 

After thanking you for having watched the video, you'll be allowed to shoot again. This is the same thing for the special weapons, though those also add a time-limit to their usage: you can replenish 3 minutes after having shot them. 

Battles against a bot are basically immediate, whilst against humans interacting with you may take hours to complete if they or you aren't online at the same time. If you leave the game, you'll get a notification in your private messages, from the game itself (not the opponent), to let you know it's your turn. Click on it to launch the game, see the damage and if you didn't loose during this fire-exchange, it'll be your turn to return shots.

The goal is evident : to sink all 5 ships, first. 

In game screen, the top is your opponent, the bottom is you. Your ships look sunken, whilst your adversary's are in red. 
Partially destroyed ones are shown smoking for your ships, 


During firing, you see both where yours and your opponents fires have been shot, until one of you is declared a victor, and offered a rematch if you want it. 

I find this game fun, but I wish I knew how to activate the 3 other greyed-out special weapons, as nothing seems to suggest on this possibility.
It's good for short matches, but if I want something longer, it doesn't seem to offer that option - say, with a bigger area and more ships. 
Graphics aren't anything to write home about, but for a free and fact-paced online game that doesn't require life, real money or necessarily a person available at hand, it's alright.

I do like that the setup lets you turn music and sounds off, which I always do. You can also lead several simultaneous battles against humans - by going to the lobby and selecting another match, or by accepting to view another ongoing battle in the occasional pop-up you may get during a battle. 

Leaving a practice battle against a bot, on the other hand, ends the battle. No one wins, and it's not available as an on-going battle. 

Note : the above images aren't meant to break copyright, but to illustrate the game, and are from several different matches I ran for this blog entry. 

You can thus play battleship alone, or against a bot, or friends, or strangers on facebook. 

All rights belong to developers, Cool Games, Hasbro and any other whose name doesn't appear during game-load, and which I couldn't find as the game doesn't seem to have a wiki page.