Free browser game
A free online survivors-like with one rule that changes the whole genre: every time you level up you take one upgrade, and the swarm takes the other two.
The rest is the shape you already know and the reason the genre works. You walk; your weapons fire themselves at whatever is nearest; things die and drop experience; ten minutes later you have either survived or you have not. What is different is the level-up screen, which stops being a menu of nice things and becomes a decision with a cost attached to every option.
The hook
You are shown three cards. You take one. They take the rest.
In every other game in this genre the level-up screen asks which upgrade you want most, and the answer is obvious within about two runs. Here it asks something harder, because the two you leave behind do not disappear — they go to the thing chasing you, and they stay there for the rest of the run.
So SHARPEN is the best card on the table, and taking it means handing over PLATING and FOOTWORK, and FOOTWORK is what actually kills you. The right play is often to take a card you do not especially want, purely so that they cannot have it, and to spend your whole level doing it.
It tells you what it costs
This would be guesswork if the cards were symmetrical, so they are not. Each one says how badly it would hurt you if you left it, and the range is deliberately wide.
SHARPEN, FOOTWORK, PLATING, LEECH. Four of any one of these and the run changes shape — a third off how long you last, or a swarm arriving faster than you can clear it.
CONSTITUTION, STUDY. Worth denying when the alternative is cheap, worth conceding when it is not.
PULL, PRECISION, FOLLOW THROUGH. Genuinely close to free. Handing these over is how you afford to take what you actually want.
Every hand is dealt to contain a mix, so there is always a question to answer rather than three versions of the same card.
One thumb
There is no attack button because there is no attack. Every weapon you carry fires itself at whatever is closest, drops itself behind you, or orbits you forever — so the only input in the game is a direction, which is why this genre belongs on a phone. Put a thumb anywhere on the screen and a stick appears under it.
Six weapons, and you can carry up to four. BOLT shoots the nearest thing. ARC is a ring of current around you. LOB is thrown at the thickest part of the crowd. FAN is five at once in a cone. ORBIT is two shards that never miss and never reload. SPIKE is dropped on the ground behind you for whatever is following.
Ten minutes
A run is ten minutes. Something very large arrives at two and a half, five, and seven and a half, and the last minute is the hardest thing in the game because by then the spawn rate has caught up with whatever you managed to build.
You keep a token for every minute you lasted, plus more for surviving and for each boss you put down, and tokens buy small permanent improvements to how you start — a little more health, a slightly better edge, a reroll, or a REFUSAL that lets you take a card and give them nothing at all. That is everything that carries over. There is no grind wall and no currency to buy.
Common questions
Yes. It runs in your browser with no download, no account and nothing to buy. Your tokens and the perks you spend them on save on your own device.
A game where you walk and your weapons fire themselves, enemies arrive in growing numbers, and you level up by collecting what they drop. The whole genre is about surviving a fixed length of time against a curve that is always rising.
The level-up screen. You are shown three upgrades and you take one, and the two you leave behind go to the swarm for the rest of the run. So the question stops being which card is best and becomes which two you can afford to hand over.
It is real and it is measurable. Four SHARPEN cards handed over cut how long you survive in contact by about forty per cent. Four FOOTWORK cards raise the arrival rate past what a good build can clear. The cards say how badly each one would hurt in their hands, rated low, real or severe.
No, and that is the interesting part. Taking cards purely to deny them leaves you with a weak build and you lose anyway. Taking whatever is best for you feeds them everything and you also lose. The runs that survive do both at once.
Ten minutes. Something very large arrives at two and a half, five and seven and a half minutes, and the final minute is the hardest part of the game.
You walk. That is the entire input, because every weapon fires itself. On a keyboard that is WASD or the arrow keys; on a phone you put a thumb anywhere and a stick appears under it.
Very well, and it is the reason the genre exists on phones at all. One thumb, no buttons, and the whole thing fills the screen.
Tokens, one for every minute you lasted plus a bonus for surviving and for each boss. They buy small permanent improvements to how you start: more health, a better edge, a reroll, or a refusal that lets you take a card and give the swarm nothing.
Six, and you can carry up to four at once. They are offered in the draft alongside the stat cards, and a weapon is the one card the swarm has no use for.