How to Play Voxel Hounds

Everything you need to go from your first deployment to holding your own in ranked: the controls, how to design a HOUND that survives, what every weapon does, and how battles are won.

Your first battle

Open voxhounds.io, type a callsign and pick a nation: the Republic of Vestra (blue), the Korvan Dominion (red) or the Solmark Union (green). Every battle is a three-way fight between all three nations, three HOUNDs each. Press Find Game; if there aren't enough human pilots online, AI pilots fill the empty slots, so you never wait long.

Each battle opens with a five-second deploy countdown. Use it to look around: find the nearest comm tower, check the radar in the corner, and spot where the other nations spawned. When the countdown reads ENGAGE, every HOUND is released at once.

You don't need an account to play. Creating a free one keeps your progress on every device, unlocks ranked play and the friends list, and lets you claim a callsign nobody else can use.

Controls

Computer (keyboard and mouse)

Phone and tablet

Turn your phone sideways. Put your left thumb anywhere on the left half of the screen to get a joystick: push up to accelerate, pull down to reverse, and push left or right to turn. Drag on the right half to aim. The FIRE button aims too while you hold it, so one thumb can track a target and shoot. The smaller buttons jump, reload, zoom, switch weapons and change the camera, and the menu button opens the scoreboard. Phone and tablet players are matched with each other, so you never face a mouse-and-keyboard player on a touchscreen.

Building a HOUND

Open the Garage from the menu. A HOUND is a chassis plus a torso you assemble piece by piece on a grid. Every part has contact points, glowing studs on the faces where it can join another part. Two parts connect only where both have a contact point on the shared face. Frames have contact points on all six faces, so they're the skeleton you build on. Armor plates attach only by their back, weapons by their base, back or sides, and radar domes by their base. Press R (or ROTATE on a phone) to cycle the orientations that fit.

Rules of thumb

• Bury the cockpit. Surround it with frames and plates so enemy fire has to chew through something else first. A cockpit on top of the HOUND is easy to spot and easy to hit.
• Point plates outward. An armor plate takes 40% less damage on the face it points toward. A plate facing the wrong way is just extra weight.
• Mind the load. Every chassis has a load limit. Going over it slows you down, and past 135% the HOUND can't deploy at all. The garage shows your load as you build.
• Avoid single points of failure. When a part is destroyed, everything that was attached only through it falls off. Two connections are better than one.
• Sniper strain. Every sniper rifle you mount makes all parts of the HOUND 5% weaker. One rifle is a fair trade; four turn your HOUND into glass.

You can save as many designs as you like, load the ready-made templates (Standard, Bunker, Scout and Artillery) as a starting point, and undo or redo any change.

Parts

Weapons

Weapons fire in groups: all your machine guns together, all your cannons together, and so on. Mounting several of one type multiplies that group's firepower. Guns are fixed to the torso, which turns at its own speed, so lead slow targets and give fast ones time.

Machine guns and sniper rifles have magazines: when one runs dry, the group reloads, so count your shots. Cannon and howitzer shells drop with distance; the gun reticle accounts for it when you aim at the ground or a target.

Chassis

The chassis has its own health. If it's destroyed, your HOUND is immobilized: still able to shoot, but stuck where it stands.

Cockpits and radar

Your radar shows enemies inside any squad-mate's radar range, plus anything you can see directly. Radar domes extend your range by 50 m each (two at most). A scout HOUND with a long-range cockpit and two domes is the eyes of its team.

How battles work

Battles take place on a 480-meter desert battlefield of dunes, ridges, a dry riverbed and ruined settlements. Each nation starts in its own corner of a triangle. Four comm towers stand between the nations, one near each pair of spawns and one in the middle.

• Capturing towers: stand inside a tower's ring to take it. A tower contested by two nations doesn't change hands.
• The comm network: while your nation holds two or more towers, your network is online and every enemy shows on your radar. Without it, you only see what your squad's radar and eyes can find, so taking towers is often worth more than a kill.
• Winning: the last nation with HOUNDs standing wins. Holding all four towers after the first minute wins outright. If the eight-minute timer runs out, the nation with the most towers wins, then the one with the most remaining integrity.
• Losing your weapons: if every weapon on your HOUND is destroyed, you can hold X to self-destruct, damaging enemy parts around you. It never hurts your teammates.

Every battle earns experience and credits: more for damage, kills, cockpit kills, surviving and winning. Experience raises your pilot level; at level 30 you can prestige for a permanent badge. Credits buy paint skins in the Market. Skins are cosmetic only and never change how a HOUND performs.

Ranked play

Ranked is for players with an account. It is currently a 1v1v1: three pilots, no AI, matched by rating so the fight is even. Your first five games are placement matches. After that your rank moves through Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond (each with four divisions), then Master and Grandmaster. Beating higher-rated opponents earns more, and leaving a ranked battle early counts as finishing last. The top pilots of the season appear on the ladder.

Tactics

• Use the countdown. Five seconds is enough to plan your route to a tower and pick where you'll take cover.
• Don't fight two nations at once. In a three-way battle, the nation that sits back while the other two trade damage often wins. Let them weaken each other, then strike.
• Shoot the cockpit. Hitting the cockpit is the fastest kill in the game, and the hit marker turns red when you do. Learn where common designs hide it.
• Break line of sight. Ruins and ridges stop direct fire completely. Only howitzers can reach you behind them, and their shells are slow enough to dodge.
• Strip parts. If you can't reach the cockpit, shoot away the frames holding it. When its last connection goes, the HOUND is lost.
• Play with friends. Add friends by callsign and invite them into a party. A party of three always fights on the same team.

Ready? Deploy now, it's free and runs in your browser.