Short description
Duel is a two-player naval battle game for iPhone and iPad. Challenge a friend to a live Game Center match, take on three computer captains who talk back, or hunt the same hidden fleet as everyone else in the Daily Hunt. Fold an iPhone Duo like a laptop and it becomes the board game.
Long description
Duel brings the pegs-and-grids board game you played as a kid to iPhone and iPad, with a few new tricks.
Stand an iPhone Duo partly folded and the screen turns into the real thing: the upright half shows enemy waters, the flat half holds your fleet and controls, and every shell arcs from your side of the hinge into theirs. Flick the upright half back to fire, like pulling a lanyard. Held like a book, the boards sit side by side.
Play live against a friend or a stranger through Game Center, with a 60-second shot clock that keeps every match moving. Or face the computer: nervous Ensign Pip, dry Captain Marlow, and the unbearably smug Admiral Vex, each with their own tactics and a running commentary. Every day brings a new Daily Hunt, a shared fleet that everyone tries to sink in as few shots as possible, with a spoiler-free emoji grid to share.
Sonar pings, airstrikes and torpedoes shake up the classic rules. Ships, pegs and wrecks are rendered in 3D. And Duel is playable without sight or a touch-drag: VoiceOver reads every shot, result and captain remark, and the Coordinates keypad lets anyone aim by row and column.
Our story
Duel's developer, Matt Anthes-Washburn (“AW”), is a lifelong tech geek and former science teacher. He first learned to code from an iTunes U course on iPhone development, and his first app helped him learn his students' names on the first day of school. His son is an aspiring game designer, and the two of them love playing and remixing tabletop and strategy games together. When he ordered an iPhone Duo, he knew exactly which game he wanted to make first: the phone's hinge looked just like the clamshell case of the classic naval board game. Father and son worked out the power-ups and gameplay together, and when his son said “it's fun,” he knew it was time to, well, ship.
In Duel, the layout follows the fold, the hinge angle sets how the 3D boards are seen and lit, and shells fly over the crease from one half to the other.
Duel was built by one developer, AW, of Awesomely Done LLC, with his son as co-designer of the special weapons and gameplay, and with a rotating cast of AI models as a ragtag development team, often switching apps and tools whenever a session maxed out its usage. Instead of one long to-do list, the work ran as many parallel threads at once: one on captains and their voices, one on the 3D boards, one on online play, one on accessibility, one on the App Store listing. In its first five days the project went from an empty repository to a TestFlight release candidate, with 95 commits and 23 pull requests.
Some ideas didn't survive. The first plan used the phone's outer screen to show the opponent across the table, until it turned out iOS only allows both displays at once for camera apps. A Same Room mode, where two devices call shots out loud to each other, works but is held back until it's tested further. Turn-based online play was cut so every match is live, with a shot clock and automatic reconnection.
The name changed three times: from Ship Battle Duo, to Ship Battle Duel, to Salvo, and finally to Duel.
“We hope this game connects family and friends, in living rooms and over FaceTime, and brings back warm memories of game nights and time together,” says AW.
Features in 1.0
- Live online matches. Real-time Game Center matches against a friend you invite or a player Game Center finds. A 60-second shot clock fires a random shot when time runs out, the screen stays awake, and a dropped player is invited back while the game waits a minute.
- Three captains who talk back. Ensign Pip (nervous, mostly random), Captain Marlow (dry, hunts on a checkerboard and chases hits) and Admiral Vex (smug, weighs every place your ships could still be hiding). Each reacts to hits, misses and sinkings.
- Daily Hunt. Everyone hunts the same hidden fleet each day. Sink it in the fewest shots, climb the daily leaderboard, and share your shots as an emoji strip in firing order, so the fleet's position stays secret.
- Special weapons. One Sonar Ping (counts hidden ship squares in a 3 × 3 area), one Airstrike (three squares in a line) and one Torpedo (runs along a row until it hits) per side. On by default; online, both players must agree.
- Built for iPhone Duo. Laptop pose puts enemy waters on the upright half and your fleet on the flat half. Book pose puts them side by side. Flick to Fire launches the aimed shot when you push the upright half back. Works just as well on any iPhone or iPad.
- 3D boards. RealityKit ships with hulls, turrets and funnels, pegs that drop into their holes, burning hits and wrecks that settle on the sea floor. Tilt the device and the pieces shift with your view.
- Every shot is a show. Shells arc between boards, planes cross the target row, torpedoes leave a wake. All sound effects are synthesized in code and matched with haptics.
- Accessible from the start. VoiceOver reads every shot, result and captain remark. The Coordinates keypad aims by row letter and column number, no dragging needed, and scales with text size. Ships can be placed with controls instead of dragging. Reduce Motion and Increase Contrast switch to steady flat boards, and hits and misses use distinct shapes as well as colors.
- Medals, ranks and Game Center. Medals such as First Blood, Hot Streak and Torpedo Run, 13 naval ranks from Recruit to Fleet Admiral, 10 Game Center achievements and 3 leaderboards (wins, fewest shots, Daily Hunt).
- Phosphor Terminal look. Amber and cyan on green-black glass, like an old BBS bulletin board screen, with a Liquid Glass icon of a hinged board, a ship and pegs.
Quotes
From the developer
“We hope this game connects family and friends, in living rooms and over FaceTime, and brings back warm memories of game nights and time together.” (Matt Anthes-Washburn)
From the captains
“Captain Marlow. Let's keep this civil.” (Captain Marlow)
“Admiral Vex. I've already won. You just don't know it yet.” (Admiral Vex)
“I sank your Cruiser! Mom is going to be so proud!” (Ensign Pip)
Fact sheet
- Title
- Duel (App Store name: Duel: Ship Battle)
- Developer
- Matt Anthes-Washburn (“AW”), Awesomely Done LLC
- Based in
- Beaverton, Oregon, USA
- Platforms
- iPhone and iPad, designed for iPhone Duo
- Requires
- iOS / iPadOS 27.1 or later
- Version
- 1.0
- Release date
- October 23, 2026
- Price
- Free, with no in-app purchases at launch. Fun optional game packs may follow.
- Players
- 1 (vs. computer, Daily Hunt) or 2 (live online)
- Online
- Game Center live matches; supports SharePlay on FaceTime calls
- Game Center
- 10 achievements, 3 leaderboards
- Development began
- October 16, 2026, 6 a.m., just after iPhone Duo pre-orders opened
