How to play

Grimlanes runs live on twitch.tv/grimlanes. You play by typing commands in the stream's chat; every soldier on the battlefield is a viewer. The game is still being tested, so the rules below may change.

Join

Name a side, a class and a lane, in any order:

!join orcs ranged top !join humans melee mid !join bot support orcs

The bot, grimlanesbot, answers with where you landed and your ability. If your !join misses a part, it tells you which.

Sides and classes

Each side has a melee hero, a ranged hero and a support. Your soldier walks and fights by itself; you decide when it uses its ability.

	Humans	Orcs
Melee	Swordsman, a tank. Shield Bash knocks back and stuns the two enemies in front of it.	Wolf Rider, fast. Pounce leaps onto the furthest enemy in reach and stuns it and one more.
Ranged	Mage. Fireballs throws three blasts at the thickest group of enemies.	Axe Thrower. Goblin Guard puts three goblins in front of it to take the hits.
Support	Cleric, heals the nearest hurt ally. Holy Ward makes the three foremost allies take less damage for a few seconds.	Shaman, heals the nearest hurt ally. Bloodlust makes the three allies nearest it attack and move faster for a few seconds.

Fight

!x fires your ability. When it's ready, your name plate glows gold. If nothing is in reach, it waits a few seconds for a target.
Your hero starts each match at level 1 and climbs to level 5 on kills, damage, healing, hits on defenses, abilities and staying alive. Each level makes it stronger and heals it fully.
If you fall, you're back after a short wait, which grows as the match goes on.

Vote your lane's tactic

Every minute, the players on each side of a lane vote how that lane fights for the next minute:

!attack: faster and harder hitting, but you take more damage.
!defend: slower, you take far less damage and heal over time, and the lane's own defenses hit harder.
!breach: your troops hit softer while a catapult rolls out behind them to batter the enemy's defenses.

They beat each other in a circle: Attack overruns a Breach, Breach cracks a Defend, and Defend holds an Attack. !1, !2 and !3 work too.

Winning

Both sides send waves of troops down all three lanes, however many people play.
Each lane has defenses in front of each side's base. Break them, then destroy the enemy core to win.
A match lasts about ten minutes. After that comes overtime, when every gate opens. If no core has fallen when it ends, the side that broke more defenses wins.
Each side's best player is named MVP at the end, and the all-time leaderboard keeps your experience and kills.

All the commands

`!join orcs ranged top`	Join with a side, class and lane, in any order
`!top` `!mid` `!bot`	Change lane. Your soldier walks there through the base, which takes a few seconds
`!melee` `!ranged` `!support`	Change class, from your next respawn
`!x`	Fire your ability
`!attack` `!defend` `!breach`	Vote your lane's tactic
`!me`	Flash your soldier, to find it on the field
`!quiet`	Stop (or restart) the bot's reminders that your ability is ready
`!leave`	Take your soldier off the field

Capitals don't matter, and a small typo in a longer word still counts.

Clicking instead of typing

A Grimlanes overlay for the Twitch player is on its way. Once Twitch approves it, hover over the video for a bar with the same choices: pick a side, class and lane, join, fire your ability and vote, all by clicking. Clicks and chat commands are the same thing to the game, so you can mix them.