

The match can be set to team death match where each player gets their own fort and resources, or team co-op where the team shares all resources and bases. Forts Multiplayer can hold up to 8 players per lobby in which each player is split on to two teams. This may sometimes require an objective to be completed, such as capturing points. The goal of the game is to destroy the opponent's core, which can be done through direct damage, like hitting it with a laser or cannon, indirect damage, like setting fire to it or hitting it with splash damage, or through making it fall to the ground by destroying the supporting structures around it.

There are various weapons like missiles, lasers, cannons, minguns, and mortars to attack with, with things like metal reinforcement, sand bags, machine guns, and flak to shoot down projectiles and defend yourself. Sandbox allows the player to experiment in any map without AIs or other players. Multiplayer allows the player to join other player's lobbies, compete in ranked matches, and practice in community-made training missions. Skirmishes allow players to combat AIs at 3 different levels of difficulty. The Campaign includes the tutorial, and 28 training missions which follows three super-powers as they battle it out over the last of the planet's resources, a secondary story-line if the player has bought the Moonshot DLC, and a tertiary story-line if the player has bought the High Seas DLC.

There are 4 different gamemodes that players can select: Campaign, Skirmish, Multiplayer, and Sandbox. The core gameplay of Forts is similar to many real-time strategy games: build up resources, acquire new technologies, and build something to attack the opponent while defending yourself from their attacks. The game has been reviewed by CG Magazine and Kotaku, the former of which described Forts 's gameplay as being similar to the Worms series. In Forts, the player builds a base, defends it, and acquires weapons through tech trees in an attempt to destroy the opponent's reactor. Forts had sold over a million copies as of March 9, 2022. Forts started development in March, 2003, as a game originally based on early bridge building games. Forts is a 2D real-time strategy video game developed and published by Australian studio EarthWork Games.
