Every ship has a weak spot.

Most games give a ship a health bar. Ship Busters gives her a hull, planks, masts, sails, guns and a powder magazine, each one destructible on its own. Where you hit matters more than how hard.

Arc your shot over the water. Watch a plank splinter and fall. Then do it again, and again, until she can't fight back.

The Broadside

Your guns reload on their own clocks. Fire them one at a time and you'll chip away at her. Hold your fire, let every gun come ready, and loose them together, the whole flank at once, in a single volley that caves a hull in.

Knowing when to hold and when to fire is the game.

Eight ways to ruin a ship

• Round shot: honest damage, straight through timber.

• Grape: spreads wide, strips a deck clean.

• Chain: tears through canvas. Rip her sails and she stops running.

• Hotshot: lodges and burns. Fire spreads from section to section.

• Mortar: arcs high over the rail and cracks the deck open from above.

• Piercing shot: punches through what it destroys and carries on to the next.

• Harpoons: bite, hold, and rip an entire section away.

• Stuck bombs: cling to the hull, ride her as she sails, and go off on their own time.

Find the magazine with any of them and the fire runs cell to cell until the whole ship comes apart.

Twelve sets. Six pieces each.

Cannon, hull, sail, mast, ram and keel, mix pieces for the stats you want, or run a full set for the bonus. Speed, hull strength, raw damage, dodge, ambush damage. Build a gunline that holds the range, or a hunter that closes fast and hits first.

Seven seas to sail

A campaign across seven seas, each with its own waters, its own enemy classes and its own way of trying to sink you.

When you've had enough of that: Gauntlet throws waves at you until you break, and the Daily Challenge gives every captain in the world the same fight on the same seed, the only variable is you.

Free to play

The whole game is free. In-game purchases are optional, and nothing sold in the shop is needed to finish the campaign, survive the Gauntlet or top a Daily.