Released here · v 0.47.0
A war drawn in pencil. Three factions, a continent taken one turn at a time, and a real-time fight for every piece of it, against an ink blot that is eating the map you are standing on.
Iron Legion, Ghost Circuit, Ash Directorate. Tanks, walkers, gunships and a commander you drive yourself. Bring a friend on the same wifi. Nuclear silos, if it comes to that. It comes to that.
Free. No install, no account, no launcher. It runs in the tab you are already in.
Credit, because this page sits on a site that is otherwise a list of our own work. The core game is by Astra. SOPHIA XT did the web integration, the Android and Windows packaging, the signed release feed and the self-updating distribution you are reading about below.
1 / 10 · home screen loop
What changed
Four builds since the last time this page was rewritten.
The full log is in the game, under What's new. This is the short version.
- v0.47
0.47
Faster battles, and one row of commands on a phone
The minimap keeps its terrain and fog between frames, only visible scenery is drawn, and canvas work is capped on high-density screens. In the same stress fixture, median drawing time fell from 24.2 ms to 10.1 ms. Edge scrolling, arrow keys, two-finger pan and zoom and dragging the radar all work, and the camera has its own settings page. On Android the commands collapse into a single Build, Army, Orders and Base row, with a compact production sheet in portrait and a side drawer in landscape. Back closes the menu or the placement you are in before it pauses the game. Wall lines show the sections you can afford, stop at the first obstruction and let you pick which way the corner turns. Windows prepares a signed update from the main menu and will not install it in the middle of a battle.
- v0.46
0.46
A moving home screen, two themes, and tactics with numbers on them
The title screen is a fifteen-second ink loop of the front. Game settings split into Appearance, Sound and Graphics, and Monochrome takes the colour out of the whole game, dialogs included. Each faction gets a tactic you fire from the new Abilities panel: Legion braces, Circuit phases, Ash overcharges. The AI uses the same ones against you.
- v0.45
0.45
Click once, build there
Pick a building, point at ground, click. Green means it fits; red tells you exactly what is in the way. On a phone you tap or drag the footprint above your finger. Buildings unfold when placed, jets leave contrails, rotors kick up wash, and the nuclear column now rolls instead of popping.
- v0.44
0.44
Three factions that look like three factions
Fifty-seven drawn structures, nineteen apiece, none of them a palette swap. New overhead tanks, walkers, helicopters and bombers. A proper command center on PC: production sidebar, radar, queues. Bloom, grading and shockwave refraction on the GPU, switchable, and the controls stay sharp outside the effect.
Get it
Three ways in. All of them right now.
Play it in the browser this second, put it on your phone, or install it on a Windows machine. All three are the same 0.47.0 build, and the two installs update themselves from this site.
Play in your browser
The whole game. Nothing to install, no account, no launcher. Click and you are in, and it is always the current build.
Android
The signed release, sideloaded. Open this on your phone, tap download, then open the file from Downloads to install it.
Installs over the Paper Front already on your phone, under the same signing certificate it has carried since 0.39. Android checks that identity, so your campaigns and commander come with it.
Windows
An installer. It keeps your saved-data directory across updates, and from then on the game checks for new versions from its own title screen.
The installer is not Authenticode-signed yet, so Windows will show an unrecognised-publisher warning on first run. The download itself is hash-checked by the game before it ever installs.
Not in Google Play. A Play bundle is built for every release and has not been submitted; if that changes, Play users will update through Play, not through this page.
The game
Take the map. Hold the map. Lose the map.
Conquest campaign
The Inkfall War.
Eighteen territories across three landmasses, and the Blot wants all of them. Every turn pays war funds. Spend them building up your bases or spend them attacking; you cannot do both. Push too fast and you hold ground you cannot defend. Push too slow and there is nothing left to hold.
Skirmish
Then the shooting starts.
Set the match up on its own screen now: map, enemies, rules, then Start. Infantry, walkers, armour, gunships. Build the base, wire the roads, put the hospital somewhere useful. Two strategic silos if the line breaks, and using one is a decision you will feel. A competitive preset strips the workshop bonuses and the Blot for a fair fight.
Commander
You are on the field, not above it.
Drive your commander yourself. Rally the line when it wavers, drop an EMP after three kills, purge the ink after seven. And understand that the other side can kill them: regicide is on, so your commander is a target, not a portrait in the corner of the screen.
Three factions
Same war, different answers.
Iron Legion is olive bunkers and reinforced plate: tougher, slower. Ghost Circuit is ivory ceramic and induction rings: fast and thin. Ash Directorate is blackened steel and furnace light: hits hardest. Every building, tank, walker and aircraft is drawn separately for each side.
Iron Legion
Brace
35% less incoming damage for 8 seconds. Movement 35% slower while braced.
cooldown 28 s · per unit
Ghost Circuit
Phase Drive
40% faster movement for 6 seconds.
cooldown 24 s · per unit
Ash Directorate
Overcharge
25% more weapon damage for 8 seconds.
cooldown 30 s · per unit
Fired from the Abilities panel beside the selected units. Each unit carries its own cooldown, the marks are shaped so they read in Monochrome, and in co-op the host checks ownership and cooldown before anything takes effect.
Multiplayer
Bring somebody. Two commanders, one side, one war.
Co-op is in. Both of you command allied forces against the AI and the Blot, with your own wallet, your own army and your own research. One of you hosts and runs the match; the other joins with a PIN. Nobody signs up for anything.
LAN co-op
Same wifi. Six digits.
- 1 One of you opens LAN co-op and hosts. The game shows a local address and a six-digit PIN.
- 2 The other opens LAN co-op, types the address and the PIN, and is in.
- 3 That is it. It talks over TCP port 42815 on your own network and nothing leaves it.
Internet rooms
Somebody across the country.
Same idea over a relay: the host gets a ten-character room code and a PIN, the guest types both in, and the host's machine still runs the match. The relay is a small service that ships with the game's source and only ever passes messages; it stores no profiles and no match history, and rooms expire after six hours.
We have not put a public room service up yet, so today the Internet rooms screen asks for a service address and you would need to run your own. When ours is live, the address will be printed here and in the game.
What co-op keeps honest
The host is the referee. A guest's building placement comes back as a confirmed building or a specific reason it was refused, and spends only the guest's funds. Faction tactics are checked for ownership, faction and cooldown before they take effect. Themes, sound and graphics stay on your own device and never become match rules.
What is not in it yet
Playing against another person, matchmaking, ranked results and accounts. Those need a server that runs the simulation itself instead of trusting a host, and that is written up as a handoff, not built. If the host walks away, the match ends; we say so rather than pretend it reconnects.
Keeping it current
The game updates itself. From here.
Every release goes up on this site with a signed feed. The installed game reads that feed, and this page reads the same release, so the version at the top of the page is the version the installers will fetch.
Windows
- 1 The title screen checks quietly when the menu opens. You can turn that off under Updates.
- 2 Download is your button, not ours. The feed's Ed25519 signature is verified first, then the installer's SHA-256 after it lands.
- 3 Install and close game, from the title screen only. It refuses during a battle, and the installer keeps your saved-data directory.
Android
- 1 The app checks the same signed feed and tells you when there is a newer build.
- 2 It opens the download page; you install the new APK over the old one.
- 3 Android checks that it is the same signing certificate, which it has been since 0.39, so your commander and campaigns carry over.
Browser
- 1 Nothing to do. The build on this site is the current one, always.
- 2 Your saves live in the browser you played in, so play in the same one.
- 3 Solo battles in progress are not saved on exit, on any platform.
feed · /paper-front/updates/stable.json signed, no-store, checked before every install
In a match
The parts you will tell someone about.
Four things that happen in most games, and one of them is your fault.
0.47.0
game version
browser, Android and Windows share it
57
drawn structures
nineteen per faction, none a palette swap
18
campaign territories
three landmasses
24
original tracks
generated here, credited in the game
60 Hz
fixed-step simulation
the same on every platform
0
game engines used
all of it written from scratch
Click once, build there
Green footprint, it fits. Red footprint, it tells you what is in the way.
Balanced, Cinematic, Off
Bloom, grading, heat shimmer and shockwaves on the GPU, with the controls kept out of the effect. Falls back to plain drawing if the GPU is gone.
The button you get to press once
Eight seconds from launch to landing, and you spend all eight of them watching. Flash, shockwave, the cloud going up, then fallout settling on ground you probably wanted to walk through later. Whiteout is the other one: a bleaching wave that seals off a region and leaves paper motes drifting where the ink used to be. Both will decide a match. Neither is free, and you will use one too early at least once.
A command center, not a toolbar
On PC the production sidebar stays put on the right: radar, categories, queues you can see, and the selected unit's orders below the battlefield. Select a factory and you get its roster; click ground and you have set its rally point. On a phone the same cards slide in a swipe deck, landscape puts it beside the fight instead of over it.
The map is eating itself
Ink spreads while you play. Stained ground hurts whatever stands on it, your buildings included, and things come out of the breaches looking for you. Scrubbers and barriers take ground back, and hunting what the ink spawns pays well. You cannot wipe it out, so stop planning to. Win on a board that keeps getting smaller.
It sounds like a war
Twenty-four original instrumental tracks, generated here and credited in the game, that shift between command, action and Blot themes as the match turns. Twelve captioned radio lines with priority, so a missile warning interrupts the announcer and the music ducks under the voice. Recorded firearms, with the sources credited.
The small print, if you want it
Open Close
Sizes, versions and signing, read from the release's own verification record rather than measured by hand.
| Form | Inno Setup installer, per user. Preserves the saved-data directory across updates. |
|---|---|
| Size | 316,330,105 bytes |
| Requires | Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit Intel or AMD |
| Internet | Not needed for solo play. Update checks contact this site. |
| Saves | AppData/Roaming/Paper Front. Not synced with Android or browser. |
| Integrity | 230 game files hash-verified against the build manifest |
| Updates | Signed feed (Ed25519), installer SHA-256 rechecked before it runs, never mid-battle |
| Signing | The executable is not Authenticode-signed, so Windows will warn about an unrecognised publisher. |
| Application id | com.sophiaxt.paperfront.reclamation |
|---|---|
| Size | 175,945,050 bytes |
| Android | 8.0 and above (min SDK 26, target 36) |
| Signing | Release signed, verified by apksigner. Same certificate since 0.39. |
| Installs | Over the existing app. Android validates the signing identity, so progress carries across. |
| Native code | None |
| Permissions | Internet only, for co-op and update checks |
| Also built | A Play Store bundle, not yet submitted |
| Players | Two allied commanders against the AI and the Blot |
|---|---|
| LAN pairing | Host, then share a local IPv4 address and a six-digit PIN |
| LAN port | TCP 42815 |
| Internet rooms | Ten-character room code and six-digit PIN through an HTTPS room service. Rooms expire after six hours. |
| Protocol | 47. Both players must be on 0.47.0. |
| Account | None. LAN play leaves nothing off the network; rooms carry names, factions, orders and match state through the relay. |
| Verified | Native transport tests and two real Windows clients on one network |
| Not verified | Phone-to-phone and Windows-to-phone on physical devices, and any relay across separate networks |
The browser build above is the same 228 game files the installers carry, served straight from this site. Music, effect and voice credits are bundled with the game and listed on its Audio credits screen.
On a phone
Fight a war on the bus.
This is not the desktop game shrunk until it fits. Portrait and landscape were laid out separately, the production cards slide in a deck under your thumb, and building is a tap on a card and a tap on the ground, or a drag with the footprint held above your finger so you can see it. Two fingers pan and zoom and never place anything.
- Portrait and landscape, laid out separately
- Tap to place, drag to position, swipe through production
- Balanced, Cinematic or Off, so older phones keep their frame rate
- Controls drawn as torn paper, not rectangles
- No account, no sign-in, nothing to set up
Honest caveat: frame rate and battery on physical phones have not been measured for this build. Emulators do not count, and we do not pretend they do.
Why a games page on a software company's site
Because it is the same engineering. Pathing, economy and construction running at sixty frames a second is the same discipline as a dispatch board that has to be right at eight in the morning. A signed update feed is a signed update feed whether it carries a game or a point-of-sale terminal. This one is just more fun to break.