The Tank
Eight sharks. One pool. Everyone in the room thinks they are the shark. Only one of them is right each round.
The rules
| Rule | Value |
|---|---|
| Sharks per room | 8 |
| Hit points | 3 per shark |
| Net closes every | 15 s |
| Damage outside the net | 1 per second |
| Max round length | 120 s |
The arena is a round pool seen from above. The Net is the safe zone. Every 15 seconds it closes in. Outside it you lose 1 hit point per second, so hiding at the edge is a plan with an expiry date.
How a round ends
The last shark alive wins.
If 120 seconds run out first, the winner is decided in this order:
- Most hit points left.
- Then, closest to the centre.
- Then, most damage dealt.
Disconnects
If you drop, your shark stops moving. After 5 seconds it is eliminated. Reconnect fast or become someone's highlight.
Controls
| Move | Keyboard and mouse | Touch | Cooldown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Move | WASD or arrows | Drag on the left half (virtual joystick) | none |
| Bite | Click or Enter | Tap | 0.6 s |
| Dash | Space or Shift | Two finger tap | 1.5 s |
| Croak | E | Three finger tap | 4 s |
Bite. A short cone in front of your shark. 1 damage.
Dash. A fast burst of speed. Gets you in, gets you out.
Croak. A parry roar. It opens a 0.25 s window. A bite that lands on you inside that window is cancelled, and the biter is stunned for 0.8 s. Miss the window and you wait 4 seconds for the next one.
The reflex triangle
| beats | because | |
|---|---|---|
| Bite | movement | a shark that only swims is a snack |
| Croak | Bite | the parry cancels the bite and stuns the biter |
| Dash | a wasted Croak | a missed Croak leaves you on a 4 s cooldown, dash in and punish it |
Everything else is reading the other shark a little faster than they read you.
XP in the tank
| Event | XP |
|---|---|
| Playing a match | 20 |
| Each elimination | 15 |
| Winning | 120 |
Eliminations pay XP only, never Teeth. That keeps teams of friends from farming each other.
Matchmaking
- Queues by room type. Pick a room: Free, 10 Teeth, 50 Teeth or 250 Teeth. Each has its own queue.
- Full room, instant start. The match launches as soon as 8 sharks are in.
- Slow queue, bots. In a Free room, after 45 seconds of waiting you get the option to start with bots. Bots are always labelled as bots. They never appear in rooms with an entry.
- One room at a time. An account can only be in one room at once.
- Shared wallets are out. A wallet linked to several accounts is blocked from paid rooms.
Entries, pots and the rake are covered in Economy.
Leaderboards
The Tank has daily, weekly and all time boards, ranked by wins.
Under the hood
The server is authoritative and runs the same simulation as your browser at 20 ticks per second. Your client only sends intentions (move, bite, dash, croak). The server checks cooldowns and positions. Your own shark is predicted locally so it feels instant, the others are shown about 100 ms behind to keep them smooth.
Teeth is an off-chain platform currency with no guaranteed monetary value.