Support

Everything is a tap or a double tap on the pitch. You play one footballer: the dot with the yellow frame. Your team always attacks upwards. What a tap does depends on whether you have the ball.

• Tap close to yourself, inside the circle round your dot: run that way with the ball. Double tap: the same, at a sprint. Tap on yourself: stand still.
• Tap a teammate, near or far: pass to them.
• Tap further away: pass to that spot. The teammate best placed runs onto it, so a tap in front of a running teammate plays the ball into their path.
• Tap the opponent goal: shoot, from anywhere. The shot goes to the side of the goal you tapped. In the opponent's half, a tap into the half of the box nearest the goal shoots too; the game shades it while you have the ball there.
• Tap over a touchline: kick the ball away that way, to get it clear.

• Tap: run there. Double tap: sprint there.
• Tap the ball: go after it until your team has it. Double tap: the same, at a sprint.
• Double tap when you are close to the opponent with the ball: tackle. If you miss, you are on the ground for a second.
• Double tap the teammate who has the ball: ask for a pass.

Without a tap, your footballer sprints to meet a pass meant for you, and a loose ball that is close or rolling its way.

Sprinting uses stamina. When it is nearly empty, your footballer can only run until it has refilled. Resting refills it faster than running, and everyone is fresh again at half-time.

A bot plays your footballer until your next tap. That happens after 5 seconds without a tap, or when your connection drops, and your frame turns dashed until you are back. Other people's footballers have a white frame, dashed in the same way. The match never waits for anyone.

Ten minutes: two halves of five, six a side. Offside is on. There are no fouls, cards, free kicks or penalties. When the ball goes out, the throw-in, corner or goal kick is given by itself. At full time every footballer gets a rating out of 10, and the best of them is the MVP.

Open Play. You see the matches being played, your country's first. If your country has a match with a free place, tap it to play; if not, a new one is made for you at once, against another country. A match counts down ten seconds before it kicks off, so that others can join. Tap any other match to watch it. Nothing runs on a timetable: matches start when players are online.

National teams have points like chess players: they start at 1500, gain points for doing better than expected against the opponent, and lose them for doing worse. A country's points only change when its players meet another country's players: a match against a team of bots changes nobody's points, though it still counts for your footballer. Footballers have leaderboards too, always per match and never by totals, and a figure counts for more the more matches stand behind it.

Yes, in every match that you really play yourself. A match you leave mostly to the bot does not count. Your footballer grows in the attributes its position uses, and every footballer has a few hidden talents that grow faster. You find them only by playing.

No. You choose a nationality, a position and a shirt number, and the game picks a name at random from common names of that country. It can match a real person's name by chance.

No. Tikivela is free, with no purchases.

Tikivela is coming soon to the App Store for iPhone. Android comes later.