Minigames

The room module Minigames turns a room into a games table: open a table, invite people and play together – right in Coviqo, with the voice room you already have open. Three games come with it:

• Inselreich – Castles & Armies – a real-time strategy game: build up your castle and economy, raise an army and take the other castles (2 to 6 players, 20–40 minutes).
• Werwolf – find the werewolves in voice before they find you (6 to 20 players), with an automatic narrator and separate voice channels for the night.
• Plapperpiep – fly your bird with your voice: louder means higher (2 to 12 players, a few minutes). No microphone? Keyboard and touch work too.

Every space also gets a scoreboard per game (this week and all time).

Switching minigames on#

Minigames are off by default and are switched on in two places:

1. The space: under Space settings › Overview, the card Minigames has the switch Minigames in this space. Below it you can switch each game on or off individually, decide whether Guests in the scoreboard count (guests may always play), and set Keep finished matches (180 days by default, 30–730). Changes are saved at once. People with Manage minigames or Manage space see the card.
2. The room: in the room settings under Content, switch on Minigames. The room gets the tab Minigames. As long as the space has minigames switched off, the row says Switched off for the space and the module cannot be switched on.

Meeting rooms and the lobby dashboard do not offer the module; lobby sessions can play. If your Coviqo installation has switched minigames off entirely, the card says so and the tab does not appear.

Who may do what is controlled by three permissions: Play minigames (join tables, play, watch, see the scoreboard – members and guests by default), Host minigames (open tables – members by default) and Manage minigames (end any match, reset the scoreboard – moderators and managers by default).

Opening a table#

1. Open the room's Minigames tab and click New table.
2. Pick a game, optionally give the table a name (it appears in the lobby and in invitations) and adjust the Game settings. Allow spectators lets others watch without seeing hidden information.
3. Click Open table. You are the Host and sit on the first seat.

At the table, people click Play (or Sit here on a particular seat). As host you can Add bot to free seats, remove people from the table (optionally replacing them by a bot), change the settings, Invite in chat and finally Start – with Fill empty seats with bots, bots fill up to the minimum number of players. Close table sends everybody back to the lobby. You can host one open table per room; a room has at most ten open tables.

Bot difficulty: every bot seat has a difficulty – Easy, Medium (default), Hard or Brutal. As host you pick it per bot seat at the table; New bots next to Fill empty seats with bots sets it for bots you add and for the bots that fill the table at the start. Everybody sees the difficulty next to the bot's name (also in the latest matches). In Inselreich an Easy bot reacts slowly, builds little and attacks late – good for your first matches; Hard reacts every second, keeps its army busy, focuses its attacks on weakened enemies and pulls back wounded units; Brutal also produces a quarter more. In Plapperpiep the difficulty decides how steadily a bot flies; in Werwolf an Easy bot decides at random, the others vote together. Bots never count for the scoreboard.

Invite in chat posts an invitation card in the room chat with the free seats and the buttons Play and Watch.

Playing, watching and coming back#

The lobby groups the tables into Your matches, Open tables and Running matches. A seat belongs to you, not to your browser tab: if you reload the page or lose the connection, open the tab again and click Continue playing – you are back where you were. The address of an open match contains ?tab=minigames&game=<id>, so you can also share or bookmark it.

Watch shows a running match without hidden information (no roles, no view through the fog of war). Spectators are counted at the table.

Players who leave a running match are not removed from the game: a bot plays their seat from then on. They do not win and rank behind everybody who stayed.

Game sounds#

Matches have short sound effects: someone joins or leaves the table, the start countdown, victory and defeat, and the events of each game (in Inselreich building, training, combat, alarms and the horn at the end of the truce; in Werwolf nightfall, daybreak, votes and the winning team; in Plapperpiep grains, crashes, ghost tricks and round starts). The speaker button at the top of a table or match opens Game sounds: a switch, the volume and one slider each for Table & results, Game events, Combat & effects and Warnings & alarms. The choice is saved on this device.

Game sounds stay quiet and get quieter while someone in your call speaks or the Werwolf narrator talks. They are silent while Sounds in voice rooms is off, while your sound is off (deafened) and while your status is Busy. Big battles do not flood you: every sound has a minimum gap and only a few play at once. In Plapperpiep the sounds are extra quiet so your microphone does not pick them up – headphones help.

Host controls#

While a match runs, the host has a toolbar Host controls:

• Pause stops all timers; Resume continues. A paused match is kept as a saved game and can be resumed later (for up to 30 days). Plapperpiep cannot be paused – its rounds are short.
• End match ends the match without a result – it does not count for the scoreboard. People with Manage minigames can end any match of the space.
• When players lose their connection, the host sees a hint with Replace … by a bot for each of them – with a picker for the difficulty of the replacing bot.

Inselreich#

Inselreich – Castles & Armies is a real-time strategy game for 2 to 6 players (bots fill empty seats). Everybody plays at the same time; there are no turns. A match lasts 20, 30 or 40 minutes.

Goal#

Everyone starts with a Castle in their own part of a new random island. Grow your economy, build an army and take the other castles. If your castle falls, you are out. Whoever still has a castle when all others have fallen wins at once; when the time runs out, the most points win. During the truce at the start (3 minutes by default) nobody can attack. Give up (sidebar, asks first) lets you leave the fight voluntarily.

How to play in the game panel explains the rules again, Keyboard shortcuts lists all keys.

The screen#

• The map in the middle: the island of hexagonal tiles – meadow, field, forest, rock, mountains, beach and sea. The outlined area around your buildings is your territory. Clicking the minimap moves the view.
• The bar at the top (Your kingdom): wood, stone, ore and food (with storage and rate per minute), gold, peasants (idle / working), soldiers, housing, your points, the truce and the time left.
• The game panel with the tabs Build, Overview, News and Players. Below it the Selection shows what you clicked, with buttons for every action.

Getting started – the first minutes#

You start with 6 peasants, 200 wood, 100 stone, 150 food and 100 gold (with normal start resources). Your castle has housing for 8 people and storage for 300 of each resource. A proven start:

1. Woodcutter next to forest – right away, ideally two. The more forest tiles touch it (up to 3 count), the more wood it produces.
2. Farm on a field. Every peasant and every soldier eats 1 food per minute.
3. House before your housing is full – peasants only grow while there is room.
4. Quarry next to rock, then a Barracks (around minute 2–3).
5. Before the truce ends: a Tower or two near your castle, and a few spearmen and archers.
6. Later: Mine next to mountains (ore for riders and knights), Storehouse when the news says "storage is full", Market to turn surplus into gold, Archery range and Workshop.

Keep a few peasants idle: every unit you train takes one peasant when its training starts.

Economy#

• Peasants grow by one every 5 seconds up to your housing (castle + houses) as long as there is food. Idle peasants work in your production buildings on their own (farms first); a building with fewer workers produces less.
• Production: woodcutter next to forest, quarry next to rock, mine next to mountains (the rate counts per neighbouring tile, up to 3), farm only on a field.
• Gold comes from taxes – 1.5 gold per peasant and minute – and from the Market.
• Storage: wood, stone, ore and food are limited by your storage (castle + storehouses); gold is not. When the storage is full, production is lost.
• Food: when it runs out and you eat more than you produce, a peasant starves every 10 seconds.
• You can only build on meadow, field or beach inside your territory. Territory reaches 3 tiles around your buildings, but never more than 5 tiles from your castle.

Buildings#

Pick a building in the Build tab, then click a spot in your territory (hold Shift to place several, Esc cancels). The tab shows the cost and what is missing. New buildings need some time to finish; most can be upgraded twice (level 2 and 3) and keep working while they are upgraded. Demolish returns a quarter of the building cost.

Only walls, towers and gates block the way. Units walk straight through every other building – yours and your enemies' – like over open ground.

Upgraded training buildings train faster. Barracks, archery range and workshop have a Rally point: new units walk there on their own.

Units and counters#

Mix your army. Towers and castles hit spearmen and archers especially hard. Units without orders defend themselves and attack enemies they see nearby, but do not chase them far.

Walls, towers and gates slow attackers down but do not stop them: attackers break through whatever blocks their way – battering rams much faster than soldiers.

Controls#

Mouse

• Click a unit or building to select it; drag a box around your units (Shift adds to the selection); double-click a unit to select all of that type on screen.
• Several buildings at once (for example a wall line): drag a box over your buildings – when there is no unit of yours in the box, your buildings in it are selected (Alt + drag selects only buildings, even with units in the box). Double-click one of your buildings selects all of that kind on screen; Shift-click adds or removes single buildings; All … in the selection (or Ctrl + A inside the selection) takes every building of that kind. The selection groups them by kind with their levels and offers Upgrade all (n) per kind with the total cost and how many can be upgraded now: upgrades start nearest to your castle and go on until the resources run out; buildings at the highest level, still under construction or already upgrading are skipped – the list under skipped shows which and why, and a message reports the result. Demolish for several buildings asks once (the castle is never demolished).
• Right-click the ground: move there. Right-click an enemy: attack it.
• Mouse wheel zooms; drag with the right or middle button (or Space + drag) to move the view.
• Fullscreen (button above the sidebar or the F key): the map fills the screen, the resources, the selection and the tabs float on top and can be hidden with Hide panels; Esc (or the button) leaves fullscreen.
• Edge scrolling: with the mouse at the edge of the map the view moves in that direction – the closer to the edge, the faster. It is on in fullscreen and off in the normal view; the pointer button next to the fullscreen button switches it for the current view (remembered in this browser). It pauses while you drag a box or move the view and stops when the pointer leaves the window; touch is not affected.
• The Selection has Attack-move (fight everything on the way), Stop, Select whole army, train buttons, Upgrade, Rally point and Demolish.

Touch

• Drag moves the view, two fingers zoom, a tap selects. Hold a finger still for a moment, then drag: a selection box (units, or your buildings when there are no units in it).
• Orders go through the selection: under Order for the next tap choose Move, Attack or Attack-move, then tap the map.

Keyboard (when the map has the focus or the pointer is over it)

Without the map: the Overview tab lists your buildings (with upgrade buttons), your army by unit type (select, send to a target – for example an enemy castle) and the enemies you can see. Everything in the game can be done from there with keyboard and screen reader. News is announced to screen readers. With reduce motion switched on in your system, units jump instead of gliding and shots are not animated.

Fog of war#

You only see what your units and buildings can see. Tiles you have explored stay visible as terrain, but enemy units there are hidden. An enemy building you have seen stays on the map as last seen until you look again. Every player's castle position is known from the start. Other players' resources are never shown, and their points only when the match is over. You can only attack what you can see.

Truce#

During the truce (0, 3 or 5 minutes, set by the host) nobody can attack or damage others, towers stay quiet and no one can break through walls. You can build, train and scout. The news tells everybody when the truce is over.

Winning and points#

• Conquest: whoever has the last castle standing wins at once.
• Time: two minutes before the end you get a warning; when the time is up, the most points win.
• Points grow with everything you own (buildings incl. upgrades and units, a tenth of their value), with everything you destroy (a fifth of its value) and with 100 points for every enemy castle you take.
• Players whose castle fell rank behind everybody still in the game – whoever lasted longer ranks higher.
• With teams the last team standing wins – also its members whose castle fell on the way. When the time is up, the team with the most points (all members together) wins. The ranking, the result and the latest matches show the team.

If you leave a running match, a bot plays your seat from then on. The match goes on while you are away – if your connection drops, come back with Continue playing.

Settings for hosts#

When opening the table: Match length (20 / 30 / 40 min, default 30), Truce at the start (none / 3 / 5 min, default 3), Start resources (few / normal / many), Island size (small / normal / large – large has about three times the area of normal, for long matches) and Spectators see the whole island (off by default – then spectators and eliminated players only see the terrain, the castles and public news). Pause stops the whole simulation; Resume continues exactly where it stopped.

Teams and start positions (at the table, once people sit down): for each seat choose a team (Team 1–4, or Alone = free for all) and a start position (Random by default, or Position 1, 2 … – numbered clockwise around the island, neighbouring numbers lie next to each other; a position can only be taken once). Allies share their view, cannot attack each other, pass each other's gates (allied walls and towers block like your own), and the bots play along with their team. With Teams together, random start positions put team mates next to each other. The match cannot start when everybody is on the same team.

Old matches#

Inselreich used to be a turn-based board game. Matches from that old version cannot be continued: running and paused ones were ended without a result, finished ones stay in the history and show Old version with their result.

Werwolf#

Roles#

At the start everybody secretly gets a role: Villager, Werewolf, and – if switched on – Seer (sees one role each night), Witch (one healing and one poison potion per game), Hunter (takes someone along when going out) and Cupid (links two lovers in the first night). The number of werewolves follows the number of players unless the host sets it. Cover role turns your card face down – handy when you share your screen.

Night and day#

The narrator leads through the game (optionally read aloud by your browser – Narrator on / off):

• Night: Cupid (first night only), then the werewolves agree on a victim (a tie means no victim), then the seer and the witch take their turn. Everybody else sleeps.
• Dawn: the night's victims are announced. A hunter who goes out picks someone to take along.
• Day: the village discusses (Vote right away ends the discussion early when most players want it), then votes – the person with the most votes goes out; a tie means nobody does. You can Abstain.

With Show roles when people go out (on by default) everybody sees the role of an eliminated person.

Game voice#

During a Werwolf match you talk in the game voice, not in the room's normal voice: by day the village talks together, at night only the werewolves hear each other, and eliminated players talk among themselves (and listen to the village by day). Spectators hear the eliminated players and, by day, the village – never the werewolves – and cannot speak. Coviqo's server decides who hears whom, not your browser. While you play, the room's normal voice is silent for you and your room microphone is off; both come back when the match ends or is paused.

Tip: the map template Village square has a campfire circle with 20 seats for Werwolf evenings.

Who wins#

The village wins when no werewolf is left; the werewolves win when they are at least as many as the others. If only the two lovers are left and one of them is a werewolf, the lovers win. At the end all roles are revealed.

Plapperpiep#

Plapperpiep is a flying game for 2 to 12 players (bots fill empty seats). All birds fly the same course at the same time – past bamboo stalks, radio masts and fans – and you steer yours by talking, singing or humming: louder means higher, silence means falling. A match has 3 to 5 short rounds of 60 to 90 seconds.

Flying with your voice#

Before the first round the card Fly with your microphone explains what happens. Click Switch on microphone – only then does your browser ask for permission – or Play with the keyboard. You can change your mind at any time with Use keyboard instead or Use microphone below the flight area; your device remembers your choice. The meter Lift shows how much lift your voice gives right now.

• Voice: speak, sing or hum to rise, be quiet to sink. A steady, medium volume keeps your height. Don't shout: the sky is a ceiling, and touching it ends your flight just like hitting the ground.
• Keyboard: hold Space, Arrow up or W to rise, let go to sink. In opera rounds Arrow down or S sinks.
• Touch or mouse: hold anywhere on the flight area to rise.

The game uses the microphone you chose in your voice settings, but it opens it separately: your room voice is not changed. If you don't want the room to hear you chirp, mute yourself in the room.

Rounds and modes#

Each round starts with a short countdown that announces the mode, then everybody flies, then the round results show the points and a short replay of the funniest crash. The first round is always Normal; after that a mode is drawn at random (never the same twice in a row):

• Normal – louder means more lift.
• Opera mode – high notes lift, low notes sink, measured against your own voice.
• Whisper round – keep it quiet! Too loud for a moment and your bird pops.
• Echo – your lift arrives half a second late, so plan ahead.

Your bird crashes on the ground, against the sky ceiling, into an obstacle, into a fan, or – in a whisper round – when it pops. A round ends when the time is up or as soon as every bird has crashed.

Ghosts#

When your bird has crashed, it becomes a ghost and the panel Ghost mode appears. You can tease the birds that are still flying: Cloud blows a cloud over their screen for 3 seconds (it does not change their flight), Head wind slows them down for 1.5 seconds. Every trick is announced half a second in advance. You have up to four tricks per round and need to wait 8 seconds between two; a bird that just had a head wind gets a short break. The host can switch Ghost sabotage off.

Points and achievements#

Per round you get 1 point for every 10 units of distance, 5 points per grain you collect, 25 points if you reach the finish and 30 / 20 / 10 extra points for places 1 / 2 / 3 (ranked by distance, then grains). The Standings add up all rounds; the most points win, and the scoreboard counts them like in the other games.

At the end of a match there are achievements: Lungs of steel (the longest continuous tone, at least 3 seconds), Silent connoisseur (won with the keyboard only), Kamikaze (crashed within 0.8 seconds) and Party popper (popped in a whisper round).

Your bird#

Under Your bird you pick how your bird looks – between rounds, not while flying. Piep (classic) is always there; the others are unlocked by your all-time scoreboard row for Plapperpiep in this space: Sausage with wings after 3 matches, Cactus with your first win, Toaster at 1500 points and The Admin with 3 wins in a row. If the scoreboard is reset, so are the unlocked birds. Guests who do not count for the scoreboard fly the classic bird.

Microphone and privacy#

Plapperpiep measures your volume (and in opera rounds your pitch) only on your device. Nothing is recorded, and no audio is sent anywhere – only numbers for the lift go to the game. The microphone stops when you switch to the keyboard, close the game or when the match ends. The lift values of a round are kept for 15 minutes to decide the round and then deleted; results and points are kept like in the other games.

Accessibility#

You can play everything with the keyboard. A caption strip below the flight area and your screen reader announce what happens: round start and mode, crashes, tricks (tricks aimed at you are announced right away), results and achievements. Every seat is marked by colour, shape and number. With reduce motion switched on in your system the background does not scroll in layers, the camera does not swing, confetti stays still and the replay plays only once.

Plapperpiep settings#

When opening the table: Rounds (3–5, default 3), Length of a round (60–90 seconds, default 60), Special voice modes (opera mode, whisper round, echo – all on by default) and Ghost sabotage (on by default). Plapperpiep has no pause; End match, removing players and replacing them by a bot work as usual – a bot takes over a seat from the next round. Spectators see all birds. If you reload the page during a round, your bird continues from where the game last saw it (the time in between counts as silence).

Scoreboard#

The tab shows the Scoreboard of the space below the tables, and the space overview can show the card Minigames – scoreboard with the top five. Switch between This week (since Monday) and All time. Columns: Rating, Wins, Played, Points and Streak (wins in a row), plus the Latest matches.

• Everybody starts with a rating of 1000. After each match you gain or lose points depending on your placing and on the ratings of the others – beating stronger players brings more. The rating only changes when at least two people who count took part.
• Bots never count; guests only when the space switched Guests in the scoreboard on. Ended matches do not count.
• Only members of the space see the scoreboard.
• People with Manage minigames can Reset scoreboard for one game or all; finished matches then no longer count, the match history stays.

Village square map#

When you create a Map room, the template Village square gives you a paved square with a well, a campfire circle with 20 log seats, four houses (tavern, town hall, bakery, smithy), a meadow and a quiet corner at the side for eliminated players. See the chapter Maps – virtual office and community map.

Privacy#

Coviqo stores who took part in which match and with which result, and your scoreboard values per space and game. Finished matches are deleted after the period set by the space (180 days by default); the all-time scoreboard is kept until it is reset. Your data export contains your scoreboard values and your matches. If you delete your account, your scoreboard values are deleted and your seats in old matches are anonymised. Game voice is never recorded. In Plapperpiep the microphone is only measured on your device – no audio is recorded or sent (see Microphone and privacy).