How to play
Gulp Duel puts two hungry fish in the same reef tank. Gold starts on the left, Plum on the right, and both are exactly the same size. Swim around, eat fish that are smaller than you, and grow. The moment you are clearly bigger than your rival you can swallow them, and that wins the round. Take three rounds to win the match, or choose two or five on the menu.
- Gold swims with W A S D and puffs up by holding Space.
- Plum swims with the arrow keys and puffs up by holding Enter.
- Gamepads work too: the stick or d-pad swims, hold A to puff. The first pad is Gold, the second is Plum.
- On a phone, hold it sideways. Each player owns one half of the screen: drag on your half to swim and hold the pufferfish button on the outer edge to puff up.
- Playing alone? Choose vs Bot and pick Easy, Normal or Hard.
- P or Esc pauses. The game also pauses when you switch tabs.
Who can eat whom
A fish can only eat another fish if it is at least 12 percent bigger. Touching is not enough: you have to get the other fish’s middle inside your mouth. Small fish get a faint shimmer around them when somebody in the tank could eat them. Every fish you eat adds to your size, but a bigger body also swims slower, so the little ones get harder to catch as you grow.
The reef keeps filling up. New fish swim in from the sides, cross the tank and leave on the other side. Most are sardines and clownfish, some are blue tangs and rays about your size, and now and then a big spotted grouper glides in. A grouper that is big enough to eat you will chase you if you swim close, and being eaten by it loses the round. You can switch the groupers off on the menu.
Puff up
Hold the puff button and your fish blows up into a spiky ball. While puffed up, nothing can swallow you. A rival or a grouper that bites anyway gets a mouthful of spines: it loses a slice of its size and bounces away, and a rival cannot eat anything for almost a second. The catch: a puffed fish swims at less than half speed and cannot eat. The arc under your fish shows how much puff you have left. It drains while you are puffed, refills slowly when you let go, and you need about a third of it to puff up again.
The hunt
As soon as one fish is big enough to eat the other, the hunter gets a burst of extra speed and a dashed ring in the hunter’s colour appears around the prey. Big fish are slow, so without this boost the smaller one could simply swim away forever. If you are the prey, keep moving, stay out of the corners and save your puff for the moment the hunter opens its mouth.
Time
Each round lasts one minute. When the clock runs out, the bigger fish wins the round. Only exactly equal sizes make a draw.
Strategy
Eat early, eat often. The first seconds decide a lot. Small fish are everywhere at the start, and every one you grab before your rival widens the gap.
Do not chase into a grouper. A snack next to a big grouper is bait. Circle around and wait for it to swim off.
Puff late, not early. Puffing too soon empties your meter while the hunter is still far away. Wait until it is about to bite, then puff and let it run into the spines.
Use the spines as a weapon. A hunter that bites a puffed fish shrinks. Two or three spiky bites can turn the hunt around.
Enjoy duels on one screen? Try the neon air hockey of Puck Duel or push your friend out of the ring in Sumo Bump.
If you enjoy Gulp Duel, try Hedge Maze or Joust Duel next.
