How a match works
- Press Space to jump out of the dropship while its doors are open over the lit part of the flight line, then steer your landing.
- Grab weapons, armour and heals from crates and the ground.
- Stay inside the safe zone. It keeps shrinking, and outside it hurts.
- Be the last soldier standing.
The ring closes in six stages over about eight minutes. Outside it you take 3 damage a second at first and 26 at the end. The guide walks through each phase.
What's in the game
- 8 guns in four rarities, from the Viper P9 pistol to the Thunderbolt .50 sniper and the Rhino RPG from supply drops, plus frag, impulse and smoke grenades. Every stat.
- An island that changes every match, built from seven locations (Lighthouse Point, Rustport, Millbrook, Mount Strata, Strata Dam, Refinery and Red Mesas) with sea caves, sewers, a mine and a vault underground. See the map.
- Movement with momentum: jet bursts, slides and slide-jumps, mantling, ziplines, ropes, jump pads, jump towers and swimming.
- Physics ragdolls that take the killing blow, and a slow-motion kill cam for your best shots.
- Bots on four difficulty levels that loot, heal, rotate with the ring and aim like people. Practise offline against 5, 10, 19 and 29 of them.
- Online or offline: Play joins the public match on the server; if the server is out of reach, the same match runs in your browser against bots.
- Private rooms for you and your friends: share a code or a link, pick the bots (or none), the island, the ring speed and the loot, and start when everyone is in.
- Spectate and compete: once you are out, watch anyone still alive and hold Tab for the scoreboard. Public matches feed daily and weekly top-player boards for wins, kills and the longest kill, right in the main menu.
- A career with XP, levels and ranks, kept in your browser between matches.
Controls
A D run, W or Space jump (hold for jets), S slide, left mouse fires, right mouse aims, E loots and grabs ziplines, G throws, Q heals, Tab opens the inventory and M the map. The guide has the full list and the movement tricks worth learning.
Questions
Is STRATA free?
Yes. Every match and weapon is free, and you do not need an account. Premium soldier cosmetics unlock as you level up, win and land kills, not with money. Your callsign, look and career are saved in your browser.
Do I need to download or install anything?
No. Open playstrata.io in a desktop browser and press Play. The game is a few megabytes and loads in seconds; it runs on WebGL, which every current browser supports.
Can I play STRATA on a phone or tablet?
Not yet. STRATA is played with a keyboard and mouse, and there are no touch controls. On a phone the site shows what the game is and lets you send yourself the link for later.
Can I play alone or offline?
Yes. Online matches are topped up with bots, and Practice mode plays offline against 5, 10, 19 and 29 bots on easy, normal, hard and brutal difficulty. If the game server can't be reached, Play starts the same match against bots inside your browser.
Is the map the same every match?
No. The island is rebuilt for every match. Lighthouse Point is always the west end and Red Mesas the east end; between them the game picks two to five of the other locations, shuffles them and joins them with new terrain, and bigger matches get a bigger island. Practice mode also has the Classic island, with all seven locations in their original order. See the map.
Is STRATA like Soldat?
Its movement is inspired by Soldat: jets, momentum on slopes, slides and ragdolls that fly from big hits. The match loop of dropship, loot and closing ring comes from modern battle royales.
More answers on the FAQ page.