How to Play Krillion Unlimited: Rules, Tiers and Modes for Beginners

Krillion Unlimited is a word game with one strange rule: the right answer everybody gives is worth almost nothing, and the right answer almost nobody gives is worth the most. Each prompt is open, like "Name a bird", so hundreds of answers are correct. Your job is to find one that is correct and uncommon, inside 25 seconds.

Your score is not a number on a board. It is a depth. Every point sinks your krill 10 metres into an ocean drawn in pixel art, and the deeper you go, the better you did. This guide covers everything you need for a first dive, then what each mode adds once you are hooked.

A prompt is a short open request: name a city in Germany, a musical instrument, a herb you would cook with. Over the question, the card shows how hard the prompt is to answer at all, from Very easy to Very hard. A Very easy prompt is one almost anyone can answer; a Very hard one is a prompt where finding any valid answer is the challenge.

You get three seconds to read the prompt before its clock starts. Then the dial counts down from 25. In the last 10 seconds it turns pink and your krill starts to bob hard, which is the game's polite way of saying hurry up.

Type one answer in the box and press Dive, or Enter. Three things can happen.

• It is accepted. The prompt ends there and then. Your krill sinks by what the answer was worth, and the tier it landed in comes up as it lands.
• It is refused. The answer does not fit the prompt, or the game cannot confirm it is a real answer. Nothing is taken off your score. A short line tells you why, and you can try something else while the clock runs.
• The clock runs out. If an answer is still sitting in the box, it is sent for you as if you had pressed Enter at the last moment. An empty box is a miss, worth nothing.

There is also a Pass key beside Dive. It ends the prompt at once and takes the miss, for when you know you are not going to find anything.

The one rule to remember: only your first accepted answer counts. You cannot bank a safe answer and then improve on it. That is why refusals matter so much, and why the strategy guide on how to get better at Krillion starts with them.

How the game judges an answer

Every prompt has its own bank of answers, each graded by how many people are likely to give it. If your answer is in the bank, it takes that grade. If it is not, an AI model decides whether it fits the prompt and how rare it is, and the verdict is saved, so everyone who gives the same answer afterwards gets the same score. Small typos and plurals are usually accepted.

Every accepted answer lands in one of six tiers, from the answer everyone gives to the one nobody else reached:

1. Plankton, 10 points (100 m). Everyone said it.
2. Too Clever, 15 points (150 m). The answer that feels like a find and is not: the second thing everyone thinks of.
3. Schooler, 30 points (300 m). Known, but not the first thing people say.
4. Rare, 60 points (600 m). Few would reach for it.
5. Deep Cut, 85 points (850 m). True obscurity.
6. One in a Krillion, 100 points (1,000 m). Nobody else is down here.

The jumps are uneven on purpose. One Rare answer is worth six Plankton answers, and a single Deep Cut is worth more than eight. Speed earns nothing at all: answering in two seconds and answering in twenty score the same, so the clock only decides whether you answer, never how much it is worth.

Points turn into metres at 10 to 1, so the ocean is your scoreboard. A perfect Classic dive, seven One in a Krillion answers, is 700 points and ends at 7,000 m.

The only words on the map are short facts at certain depths, which come up as you sink past them: the deepest scuba dive ever at 332 m, the Titanic at 3,800 m, the trench floor at 7,000 m where a perfect dive ends. The waters themselves have no names. Below the real ocean, the game's own world carries on a long way down.

At the top of the screen, a square for each prompt fills with its tier's colour, but only once the krill has landed with the answer. Watching it sink is half the fun, so the game will not spoil the result early.

Classic is the main dive: seven prompts, 25 seconds each. Choose Classic on the start screen and press Begin descent.

When the seventh prompt is done, the report shows your depth, the depth tokens you earned, and, once enough people have answered the same prompts, a graph of everyone else's totals with yours pinned on it ("Deeper than 63% of divers on these prompts"). Below that are your seven answers and their tiers. Open a prompt there to see example answers from its bank, which is the fastest way to learn what the deep end of a prompt looks like.

From the report, Dive again starts a fresh dive straight away, Share copies a row of coloured squares and your depth (no answers, so nobody is spoiled), and Menu goes back to the start screen.

There is no daily limit. The game deals from 2,648 prompts, every one as likely as any other, and keeps track of what you have had, so in your own dives you will not see a prompt again until you have played them all.

Endless deals prompt after prompt with no end except your air. You start with three tanks. You lose one when you pass, or when the clock runs out with nothing accepted. A One in a Krillion answer gives a tank back, up to three. A refused answer costs only the seconds it took, as in Classic.

Endless is how you see the rest of the world. The ocean runs 250 km down, far past any real trench, and nothing repeats inside one run. The start screen keeps your best depth for each mode separately.

Press Play multiplayer and you reach the room list. Everyone in a room gets the same prompt at the same moment, and when the clock runs out you see what each player answered and what it scored. Rooms hold up to 40 players. You can join a public one or create your own: 5 to 50 prompts a dive, 5 to 60 seconds a prompt, public or private. A private room gets a six-digit code to share, and our guide to a rarest answer game night walks through running one for friends.

Press Play 1 vs 1 instead and you are matched with one opponent for a rated match of seven prompts on a shorter 15-second clock. More points wins, ratings rise and fall with Elo, and seasons run four months. The full rules, from divisions to the tab rule, are in our guide to 1 vs 1 ranked seasons.

Krillion's start screen also leads to Krillocity, a race mode where accepted answers swim your krill along a course against other racers.

Every metre you dive earns a depth token, in every mode. Tokens are spent in the shop, opened from the purse in the top left corner, on avatars for your krill and emotes to send in rooms and 1 vs 1. The plain krill is free, the cheapest avatars cost 4,000 tokens and the dearest you can buy cost a million, and four emotes come free for everyone. A few avatars cannot be bought at all: 1 vs 1 seasons give them out.

You do not need an account to play or to earn. Signed out, your tokens, avatars and records belong to the browser you play in. Sign in and the account keeps them on every device, and whatever the browser had already earned moves into the account by itself.

Start with Classic, and on the first prompt try this: name to yourself the first answer that comes to mind, then do not type it. Keep looking for one you would not expect anyone else to say first, as long as it is certainly right, and type that. Watch which tier it lands in. Do that for seven prompts and you will have learned more about how the crowd thinks than any guide can tell you. Then open Krillion Unlimited again and see if you can go deeper.