⚙️Game Mechanics

Warigami is a real-time strategy game built around the central concept of origami warfare. Paper armies are folded into being, clash across a tabletop battlefield, and are unmade back into flat sheets. This page covers the systems that tie the game together — see the linked pages for deeper dives on units, resources, and buildings.

Folding & Production

There is no universal “transform” button. In Warigami, folding is how you build an army. Only folder units — the Prime, Pupils, and Proteges — can fold, and every new unit and structure they make is folded from paper on a paper mat, consuming carried materials. Fresh combat folds muster into a tidy grid near the mat.

There are two ways units enter the field:

• Basic units are scratch-folded straight from your shared stockpile by a folder. Pupils, Pikemen, Pelters, and Patchers come this way.
• Advanced units are first printed as flat-packed kits at the Patternworks or Printworks, then a folder (or a Paper Pusher) carries the kit and raises it into a finished soldier anywhere on the map. Folders can carry up to three kits at once; Pushers carry one. A dropped kit lies on the ground and can be claimed by either side for a short time before it scatters.

Buildings are folded the same way, by Pupils and the Prime. The Prime folds at double speed, making it your fastest builder as well as your commander. Folding and construction both require raw materials to be carried to the site — see Resources for how supply and Paper Pusher convoys work.

Un-folding

Anything you folded can be taken apart again. Select a unit (other than your Prime) or a finished building (other than your Palace) and press ♻ Un-fold (hotkey U): the nearest free folder walks over, the sheet reverses itself, and half the materials come back to the nearest store. It is how you recover from a wrong build, thin a bloated army, or turn an idle Parapet back into Paper. A map can forbid it.

Combat

Combat in Warigami is resolved through hit points and damage, not a damage-type matrix. There are no Sharp/Blunt/Ranged/Corrosive categories — a hit simply subtracts its damage value from the target’s HP.

• Melee vs ranged — Each unit has a range. Short-range folds (Pupils, Pikemen, Proteges) must close in; ranged folds (Pelters, Plaguebearers, the Prime) fling folded darts or planes from a distance. A ranged unit needs a clear line of sight to fire — what it cannot see through, it cannot shoot through.
• Splash damage — The Proxie is a pitch-stuffed walking bomb. When it reaches its mark it detonates: the full direct hit lands on the target, and an indiscriminate splash falls off toward the rim of the blast, harming friend and foe, units and buildings alike. It can also be told to Detonate on the spot, or self-loads into a Proxie Plopper to be lobbed as living artillery.
• Damage over time — The Plaguebearer can seed Pestilence: a spreading plague that bleeds the infected for damage every second and leaps to anyone who lingers nearby. Its ordinary attacks also slow the target briefly.

Armor

No unit has armor as a base stat. Armor comes only from research — the Plated Folds Polish (researched at the Playbook Projector) grants your combat units flat damage reduction, subtracted from every hit they take (a hit is never reduced below a floor of 1). Workers and haulers do not benefit. Some abilities also cut incoming damage while active — a Pupil’s Paper Shield halves all damage for its duration.

Abilities

Specific units have specific active abilities rather than a shared move set. Examples:

• Prime — Inspire (nearby allies attack faster for a time), Part Out (unfold one of your own units or buildings back to flat sheets, reclaiming half its materials), and Fold Shift (refold a short hop ahead).
• Pupil — Paper Shield (half damage for a few seconds).
• Protege — Blade Refold (a temporary damage boost).
• Plaguebearer — Pestilence (a spreading plague).
• Proxie — Detonate (blow up where it stands).

Researching the mastery Polish (Paper Prowess) opens a second ability slot on combat units, adding a mastery-tier ability such as the Prime’s Fold Shift.

Aircraft & Anti-Air

Some folds take to the sky. Fliers ignore terrain entirely — they hold altitude over cliffs, water, and mountains, going wherever they please above the map.

• What can shoot them — Every ranged unit and tower can fire on aircraft; melee units cannot reach them at all. A flier over a wall of swordsmen is untouchable until something with range turns up.
• Dedicated anti-air — The Plasma Pulse Projector is anti-air only. It snaps out long-range plasma pulses that shred fliers, but it cannot hit ground targets, so it never covers a base by itself.
• Ports and slots — Aircraft (Planes and Pelicans) are built at a Port and each takes one of its eight aircraft slots. Aircraft burn fuel while aloft: when it runs low they fly home, land on one of the Port’s two pads to refuel (Planes also reload their attack runs; Pelicans take on fresh Paratroopers), then relaunch. If the nearest Port’s pads are full, they divert to the next nearest Port. Lose every Port and any airborne aircraft run dry and crash.

Fire

The Pyro throws flame that keeps burning after it lands. A burning unit takes damage every second for several seconds — and crucially, the fire spreads by contact: any unit that physically touches a burning one catches fire too, so a single Pyro loosed into a tight formation can set the whole crowd alight.

The counter is the Paster. It carries no weapon; instead it seeks out burning allies and buildings on its own and smothers the flames with Pyro-Proof Paste. Keep Pasters near your line whenever fire is on the field, since the burn does not care whose folds it is on.

Water puts fire out. Anything that gets wet stops burning: pull a scorched squad in close to a Pylon Plantation and its sprinkler mist douses the flames, and the Pitch Plume storm’s rain snuffs out every fire caught under the cell. A burning unit standing in the mist won’t spread the fire, either.

Plague

The Plaguebearer can seed Pestilence — a black plague that blooms where it is cast and bleeds the infected for 2 damage a second over 40 seconds. It behaves less like a weapon and more like a real disease:

• Folds only. It infects units, never buildings.
• Spreads on contact, across team lines. An infected fold passes the plague to any fold it touches — and it does not care whose side that fold is on. Cast into an enemy crowd it rampages through their army, but it will hop straight onto your own troops if they brush an infected enemy, so keep your folds clear of the sick.
• Never crosses air and ground. An infected flier cannot infect ground units and vice-versa. To catch fliers, drop the bloom directly beneath them.
• Immunity. A fold that survives or recovers from a bout is immune to reinfection for two minutes.
• Hidden in fog. Like anything else, an active plague and its spread are invisible to you inside the fog of war — you only see it where you have vision.

The Aegis Shield

The Paladin can raise the Aegis Shield — a paper ring that snaps up around him and his nearby allies. The ring is a wall: it soaks any blow thrown from outside it, and it shoves enemies out as it forms, so everyone inside is sheltered from ranged and melee fire — but no one inside can attack out, the Paladin included. A striker already inside the ring, and weather, fire and plague, go straight through. The ring’s strength persists across raises (no free refill by flicking it off and on) and mends only while lowered. It travels with the Paladin so the honour guard can advance under cover: raise it to take the volley, lower it to strike back.

Population

Every unit takes up population space. Your population cap starts at 20 and can be raised by building Pavilions (+8 each) up to a hard maximum of 200. The Palace upgrade Proliferated Premises adds a little more capacity as well.

Most units occupy 1 population slot. The only exception in the roster is the Prowler, which weighs 2. Proxies count as 1 while fielded, but once a Proxie walks itself into a Proxie Plopper it is stored as bomb ammo rather than standing on the field.

Weather

The only weather is the Pitch Plume — a traveling storm cell that enters from a map edge and crosses the battlefield along a track, usually through the mid-map corridor. Anything caught in the open under the cell takes damage every second, and buildings take a share of it too. You get a forecast warning before it makes landfall.

Sheltering matters:

• A unit garrisoned inside a building is completely safe from the storm.
• A unit standing near a friendly building (under its eaves) is partly sheltered and takes reduced damage.
• The Plume Proofing research halves storm damage on top of that.
• Auto-Shelter is a per-unit toggle: workers and haulers duck into the nearest garrison when a storm (or, for them, a raider) closes in, then resume the interrupted job once it clears. Pupils and Proteges can opt in too, but they shelter from the storm only — never from a fight.

The storm also leaves a fertile wake where resources regrow quickly, its rain fattens Paper Pylons, puts out any fires caught under the cell, and a Printworks drinks in extra raw Pitch as the cell passes over. Workers caught in the open will panic and flee for cover, then resume their jobs once the danger passes. The Prophet’s Prism lets you call, still, read, and even turn the path of these cells.

Fog of War

The map is hidden until you explore it. You reveal terrain around your own units and buildings, each with its own vision range, and allied players share vision with you. Mountains, ridges and solid obstacles block line of sight, so you cannot see — or shoot — past them. High ground helps: a tower on a higher step reaches a square further per level. A scenario map can start Explored (the land visible, enemies hidden) or Revealed (no fog at all).

Terrain

The battlefield is built from elevation, water, and impassable terrain:

• Cliffs — A height difference of two or more steps blocks movement. A ramp connecting the two levels is the only way up or down a cliff edge.
• Water — Blocks movement. A bridge is the only way across, and units can board or leave a bridge only at its open ends.
• Mountains — Block both movement and line of sight.
• Obstacles — Big trees, boulders, outcrops, rock piles, deadfalls and menhirs are solid: they block movement and sight. Decorations (small trees, reeds, ruins, flowers) are walk-through and block nothing.
• Walls — A Palasade is drawn as a run and rises as one wall; a Portcullis is the one door in it, opening for friends and shutting on enemies on its own, or pinned open or shut. Walls part for no one else.

Victory & Game Modes

A team stays in the game only while it holds both a Palace and a Prime. Destroy either the enemy’s Palace or their Prime and that team is eliminated — its entire remaining force falls with it. Guard your own Prime and Palace closely: losing just one of them loses the war.

• ⚔ Melee — The standard match: stock rules, the same start for everyone, win by destroying every enemy’s Palace or Prime — losing either eliminates a player. Generated skirmish maps and any Melee map from the Library.
• ⚡ Use Map Settings — Custom maps that carry their own rules: placed armies, per-map costs and stats, vision, supply rules, and triggers that decide victory and defeat. Defeat on annihilation stays on by default; victory on annihilation is up to the map. See Scenarios and Triggers.

Warigami also supports multiplayer for cooperative and competitive play, with up to twelve colours in any alliance layout.