Dots & Boxes: Online & AI

Bring the classic pen-and-paper game to your phone. Connect neighboring dots, complete boxes and outsmart your opponent one line at a time.

Remember Dots & Boxes at the back of class? Two pens, one notebook page, a grid of dots and a lot of friendly trash talk. Dots & Sticks brings that classroom classic to your phone: play online, climb the Solo Challenge, challenge a friend, or pass one phone back and forth. And no ad ever interrupts a match.

Known as Dots & Boxes, Dots and Lines, Dots and Dashes or simply Squares, it is easy to learn and harder to master than it looks.

HOW TO PLAY
Take turns drawing a line between two neighboring dots. Close the fourth side of a square and the box is yours, and you play again. One careless line can hand your opponent a whole chain of boxes, so every move counts. When the notebook page is full, the player with the most boxes wins.

PLAY YOUR WAY
- Solo Challenge: climb a ladder of four opponents, from Easy on a small grid to Expert on an 8x8 board. Beat one to unlock the next, and earn up to three stars for every win.
- Quick Match: jump into an online game with another player and see who plays the better chains.
- Play a Friend: create a private room, share the code or the link, and play from anywhere. Pick the board size, then ask for a rematch.
- Pass & Play: two players, one phone. Perfect for the coffee table, a long trip or a classroom break.
- Learn in 30 seconds: a short, hands-on walkthrough teaches the rules the first time you play.
- Pause any game, close the app and resume exactly where you left off.

MEET YOUR OPPONENTS
Every opponent on the ladder has a name and a playing style of their own. The first ones make beginner mistakes; the later ones count the chains, punish loose lines and make you earn every box. Win by a wide margin to collect all three stars, then come back and replay for a perfect score.

ONLINE, WITH PERSONALITY
Pick a name and an emoji avatar, and show your country flag if you like (you can switch it off in Settings). Your online rating rises when you win and falls when you lose, and your stats screen tracks games, wins, win streaks and your best run. You can delete your online data at any time from that screen.

CHOOSE YOUR BOARD
Play on 5x5, 6x6, 7x7 or 8x8 dots, from a quick round of a minute or two to a long strategic battle. The bigger the grid, the more chains, sacrifices and double-crosses you will need to plan.

NO ADS WHILE YOU PLAY
Your game is never interrupted. Ads only appear after a game ends, never in the middle of a match and never after your very first game. The game is free to play, with no sign-up and no in-app purchases.

A NOTEBOOK COME TO LIFE
Hand-drawn ink lines, ruled paper, pencil doodles in the margins and soft classroom sounds make every move feel tactile, never glossy and never neon. The layout adapts to phones, tablets and landscape, and the game speaks English, French, German and Spanish, picking your device language automatically.

MADE FOR SHORT BREAKS
A game on a small grid takes just a couple of minutes, so it fits a queue, a commute or the gap between lessons. Hand the phone to a sibling, a classmate or a grandparent: nobody needs a tutorial, and everybody remembers the rules.

WORKS WHEN YOU DO
Solo Challenge and Pass & Play need no connection at all, so you can play on a plane, on the bus or anywhere the signal drops. Online games reconnect on their own if your connection wobbles.

TIPS FROM THE BACK OF THE CLASS
- Avoid drawing the third side of a box: it hands that box to your opponent.
- Count the chains near the end. Sometimes giving up a few boxes wins the game.
- Small grids reward careful counting, big grids reward patience.
- Going second? Stay calm: the last chains often decide everything.

If you love classic board games, paper games, two-player games or strategy puzzles, Dots & Sticks is the dots and boxes game made for you. Grab a friend and claim the squares.