Commedia is an abstract strategy game played by two players on a 7x7 board. There are ten pieces in all, and you begin with five when starting out.

If you start the game, the pieces you'll begin with are Brighella, Columbina, Il Dottore, Flavio, and Pantalone.
If you join the game, your starting pieces will instead be Beltrame, Harlequin, Il Capitano, Isabella, and Tartaglia.

These pieces will be placed along the second row from the bottom of the board in any desired order. The leftmost and rightmost spaces cannot be occupied. This is the B row for player 1 (starter) and the F row for player 2 (joiner).

Remembering the pieces' names will also be somewhat important because of this game's capturing mechanics.

When your piece lands on a spot occupied by your opponent, you can potentially capture it: the only characters that can capture each other are those that either share similar characteristics or are bound together in the Italian theatre form commedia dell'arte. Luckily, these only come in pairs: only Brighella and Beltrame can capture one another; Columbina and Harlequin; Il Dottore and Il Capitano; Flavio and Isabella; Pantalone and Tartaglia.

The objective of the game is to capture three of your opponent's five pieces. Once a piece is captured, it is under your control for the remainder of the game. However, there are no other pieces a piece you have captured can capture or be captured by.

The catch? You can't ever see your opponent's pieces.

To move a character, you select their name and click on the direction you want to move it in; all pieces can only move one square per turn. However, you can only move forwards and backwards by default. You can alternatively choose to broadcast the piece you are moving and gain access to all eight possible directions you can move in.