Survival mode: you play as Player 1 (left board). Defaults use QWERTY physical key positions (other layouts: same key caps).
Board: top 5×5 is the puzzle grid; bottom 2×5 is the spawn area—units appear here and fight toward the enemy.
Open the game menu → Patterns to learn each card-combination layout.
Swap tiles: move with E/S/D/F, press Q on the first card, then Q on the second—if the swap is allowed, they exchange places.
In the spawn area, arrange tiles to match a pattern from Patterns; matching cells change into spawn-card artwork. With the cursor on such a tile, press W to spawn a unit—it enters battle against the enemy.
Move: E up, S left, D down, F right.
Q: select two tiles to swap. W: spawn on a ready spawn tile (see above).
Pause: Space. Quit: Esc.
End screen: Space continue, Esc quit.
Free Siege is a puzzle that goes to war without asking you to click every sword. The top of the board is a 5×5 of tiles. The bottom is a 2×5 spawn strip. You swap two cells until a remembered shape appears, then spend that shape as a unit that walks itself toward the other castle.
This build’s survival mode puts you on the left as Player 1. The enemy is the clock and the other wall. Soldiers are the cheap sentence. Knights hop past small ground trash. Veterans are moving furniture that holds a lane. A ram is slow, soft, and the only thing that really insults a keep. Plants sit home and refuse the door. A golem is a wall that later becomes a crater. Dragons ignore the ground; druids are the rude answer from the battlements, three sloppy cannonballs that hurt everyone. Marion is not a unit. Marion is flowers thrown in the other player’s face.
The Patterns menu is the real manual. Nothing on the field is guessed. You build the picture, the spawn tiles change their faces, and W spends the ready card. A pretty grid that never validates is just decoration while the other castle gets closer.
Two-player Free Siege is the same grammar shouted across a keyboard. Here the shout is quieter: keep the front fed, do not summon a ram into a closed lane, and do not fire the druid because you are bored. The war ends when a keep runs out of patience. Until then you are a general whose only order is swap, swap, spend.
