Everything you need to know to shape a world, guide a people and win on Bane.fr -- from the first click to the final battle.
Bane is a god game inspired by Populous: each player embodies a tribal deity who shapes the terrain, guides their people and casts spells to dominate a map shared with their opponent(s).
There are no turns: everyone acts at the same time, in real time, on the same world. A game is played by 2 players today (3 and 4 players are coming soon), each leading a tribe settled on its own starting island.
Victory is achieved by reducing the opposing tribe's population to zero -- or by winning the final Armageddon battle if it has been triggered.
Every tile in the world has a centre where its diagonals cross. Left click raises this centre, right click lowers it, cycling lowered / flat / raised -- a raised tile forms a small pyramid, a lowered tile an inverted pyramid.
Click again once the tile is already at an extreme (raised or lowered) and the whole tile, centre and corners included, rises or sinks one more level. Since corners are shared with neighbouring tiles, this movement spreads outward step by step, down to sea level.
Flat terrain is essential: it's the only surface your people can found new huts on.
You can only use Raise Land if one of your buildings or one of your followers is visible in the camera's current view: you cannot sculpt the ground at a distance, outside the area where your people are. Spells that also reshape terrain -- Earthquake and Volcano -- have no such limit and can be cast anywhere on the map. So that the Raise Land rule still holds even when zoomed out, the camera cannot pull back indefinitely: zooming out is limited to a few levels from maximum zoom (see Controls).
Your followers are born in your huts and grow as long as they aren't full. Once a hut is full, newcomers set off to found their own hut on nearby flat terrain.
A hut grows based on the number of flat tiles around it (out of its 8 neighbours): the clearer the site, the grander the building that grows there, and the higher its maximum population.
| Tier | Flat neighbours | Building | Max. population |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Tent | 2 |
| 2 | 2 | Straw hut | 3 |
| 3 | 3 | Wooden house | 4 |
| 4 | 4 | Stone house (small) | 5 |
| 5 | 5 | Stone house (large) | 6 |
| 6 | 6 | Wooden fort | 7 |
| 7 | 7 | Stone fort | 8 |
| 8 | 8 | Stronghold | 20 |
Your people can behave in two ways, independent of the power selected: in Settle Mode (the default), your followers wander and found huts on their own; in Join the Ankh, they all converge on your ankh and gather there -- useful before casting Create Knight, since each follower gathered there then becomes an extra life. Whoever reaches the ankh first picks it up and becomes its carrier: it then stays exactly where it was found, no longer founding huts or wandering, and serves as a rallying point for the others -- until you switch back to Settle Mode, when it resumes its normal activity, ankh in hand.
Terrain tinted in a colour is under that tribe's influence: keeping it that way long enough near an enemy hut can flip it.
Each power costs mana, which regenerates slowly over the course of the game. The first two are basic tools, used continuously; then come the destructive spells and Armageddon, the final battle.
Mana regenerates on its own, continuously, with nothing to gather or activate. Its regeneration speed and your maximum reserve grow with your tribe's population and number of huts: the more your people thrive, the more costly powers you can chain together.
Raises or lowers the ground -- the basic tool for flattening buildable sites and sculpting the landscape.
Plants your ankh on a new site (impossible at sea). It's the heart of your tribe, a rallying point for your people.
Fractures a 10x10 tile area: half the flat terrain there is destroyed, each ruined tile becoming a pit or a rise.
Curses a 10x10 tile area: each tile has a 66% chance of turning into a swamp. Anyone who ventures in is trapped for 30 seconds and dies if nothing is done -- raising or lowering a cursed tile purifies it.
Raises a peak 8 levels above the targeted ground, and keeps erupting around it. Any building caught on its new slopes shrinks or is destroyed.
Your ankh carrier takes up arms and charges alone at the enemy camp until it falls. Each follower gathered at the ankh then becomes an extra life. Requires a living ankh carrier.
Every landmass in the world sinks by 4 levels, permanently redrawing the coastlines. Anything that ends up at or below sea level is swallowed for good.
Both ankhs converge at the heart of the world: every hut empties out and the whole people marches to a final battle. The side left with no one standing loses. Once triggered, no more actions are possible on the map.
Raise Land and Move Ankh are basic tools used continuously: they are therefore not counted as spells in the statistics and leaderboard, unlike the six powers that follow.
Your followers fight automatically on contact with an enemy. A knight (created via Create Knight) is formidable in melee and has extra lives for every follower that had gathered at the ankh before its creation.
A tribe's population counts the inhabitants of its huts and the followers moving on the map. As soon as a side's population drops to zero, the game ends and the other tribe wins -- the final score is the population reached by the winner.
Armageddon offers another way out: once triggered, no more powers can be cast and the game plays out to the last battle.
The same shortcuts are shown in-game via the help button.
Bane.fr is played online, in real time, against other players.
Needed to open or join a room, and so your games are attached to your profile.
From the Games page, create your own room or join another player's. 2 players can face off today; 3 and 4 players are coming soon.
Once the room is full, the game starts on a randomly generated world. Every player's actions are synchronised in real time between browsers.
At the end of the game, the winner, their score and the spells cast are recorded. Find them under My games, browse every game under Statistics, or see who's dominating on the Leaderboard.
Create an account and open your first room, or watch the games under way.