How to play Plane Hunt
- Pick a board. Choose Mini, Classic or Big, decide if the Tactical rule is on, and pick how well the computer aims.
- Hide your planes. Drag each plane onto your grid and tap it to rotate it. Planes must stay inside the grid and must not overlap, but they may touch. Tap Random if you want the game to place them for you, then tap Ready.
- Call a cell. On your turn, tap a cell on the enemy grid, like "C5". The answer is Miss (nothing there), Hit (you found part of a plane) or Head (you hit the cockpit: the whole plane is down and revealed).
- Take turns. After every shot the turn passes to the other side, hit or miss.
- Win. The first player to down every enemy plane wins the game.
Your own grid stays on screen too, so you can watch where the computer is shooting and how close it is getting to your planes.
The three boards
| Board | Grid | Fleet | Tactical rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mini | 8 x 8 | 1 classic + 1 small plane | Off by default |
| Classic | 10 x 10 | 1 big + 1 classic + 1 small plane | Off by default |
| Big | 12 x 12 | 1 big + 2 classic + 1 small plane | On by default |
Columns are letters (A to L) and rows are numbers (1 to 12), just like on the notebook page. Every board mixes planes of different sizes, so the misses around a hit also tell you which plane you found. Mini is a quick game for a coffee break, Classic is the everyday game, and Big is the long, tactical one. Online games use the Classic board.
Plane shapes
Every plane is drawn on the squares of the grid, pointing up, down, left or right. H marks the head:
- Small plane (8 cells): a head, a wing row of 3, one body cell and a tail row of 3.
- Classic plane (10 cells): a head, a wing row of 5, one body cell and a tail row of 3. This is the plane from the school game.
- Big plane (13 cells): a head, a wing row of 7, two body cells and a tail row of 3.
Only the head counts for downing a plane. You can hit every wing cell and the plane keeps flying, which is what makes Plane Hunt different from Battleship.
Tips: how to find the head
Wings first, head next
The wing row is the widest part of a plane, so it is the easiest part to hit. When you hit a cell, look for the rest of the wing row on both sides. Once you know which way the wings run, the head sits exactly in the middle of the wing row, one cell in front of it, on the line that runs across the wings.
Think about which way it points
A wing row has the head on one side and the body and tail on the other. If the cells behind the wing row are empty, the plane points the other way. Every miss next to a hit tells you something.
Shoot where planes fit
Planes are big. A corner squeezed between misses often has no room for a whole plane, and once the big plane is down the smaller ones need less room, so keep track of which planes are still flying. Aim at the open middle of the grid first, then narrow it down.
Hide your planes well
Planes along the edge are hard to hide because the opponent can guess their direction. Turn your planes in different directions, and do not line all the heads up in the same row.
Watch the computer levels
Easy shoots at random. Medium searches around every hit it makes. Hard keeps a map of every place your planes could still be and goes for the head, so it is a real challenge.
The Tactical rule
With Tactical on, each player may once per game skip a shot and move one plane that has not been hit to any new valid spot (it can also be rotated). The opponent is told "The enemy moved a plane!" and all of their earlier misses on your grid turn faded with a small question mark, because a plane might now sit on top of an old miss. Hits and downed planes stay as they were.
Use it when an untouched plane is about to be found: late in the game, a well-timed move can wipe out several turns of your opponent's work. The computer on Medium and Hard uses it too.
Play Plane Hunt online with a friend
- Play the computer on any board, with or without the Tactical rule, at your own pace.
- Play online pairs you with whoever is available at that moment on the Classic board (one big, one classic and one small plane).
- Play with a friend gives you a private link. Send it in any chat app, and the game starts when your friend opens it.
Online games are checked by the server, so nobody can peek at the other fleet: each side only learns Miss, Hit or Head. There is a small chat for quick messages and a rematch button when the game ends.
Avioane: the notebook game from Romanian schools
In Romania the game is called Avioane, and almost everyone has played it on squared math paper during a break, with two grids drawn in pen and the planes sketched square by square. The rules travelled from school to school, so you will find small differences, but the heart of it is always the same: find the head and the plane goes down. Plane Hunt keeps that notebook look, from the blue grid lines to the red margin.
Games like Plane Hunt
If you like guessing what your opponent is hiding, try Minesweeper for pure deduction or Memory Match for a head to head memory duel. For classic two player strategy, Connect 4 and Checkers are free to play online too.
