Gameplay

Gameplay

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Core loop

1. Choose a mode, map, atmosphere, character, and—before a Classic run—an optional risk/reward modifier.
2. Spawn in a cleared starting area with the Pistol.
3. Defeat a finite wave budget while additional enemies are paced into the arena.
4. Collect dropped loot, use cover and explosive barrels, unlock weapons with score, and manage health, ammunition, stamina, and cooldowns.
5. Clear the remaining enemies to advance the wave. In solo Classic, choose from a three-box perk gamble between waves.
6. Continue until death. Classic has no final victory state; the objective is the best wave and score possible.

Tutorial mode has an endless practice roster rather than normal wave progression. Multiplayer uses host-synchronized waves; see Multiplayer.

Modes

Mode	Confirmed behavior
Classic	Solo endless survival with selectable difficulty, map, time of day, optional generated run modifier, wave perks, score unlocks, and persistent progression for signed-in players.
Tutorial	Guided, paused instruction steps; unlimited health and stamina; weapons are available for practice; enemies unlock by tutorial kill milestones. No normal waves, achievements, or weapon mastery accrual.
Multiplayer	Peer-hosted match with shared enemy world, lobby options for Co-op Survival or Last Man Standing, optional time limit, chat, spectating, and scoreboards.

Waves and escalation

The starting wave uses a finite enemy budget. The base budget is 7 + wave × 3, scaled by difficulty and any run modifier, with a minimum of four. Up to five enemies are seeded at wave start and the rest arrive in paced batches.

Enemy health increases by 15% per wave. Enemy damage rises 2% per wave and movement speed 0.6% per wave, both capped at the wave-40 contribution. The mix escalates from Normal enemies to Fast enemies at wave 2, Tanks at wave 3, and Snipers at wave 4; higher waves increase the chance of harder archetypes. In solo, the four tactical archetypes join on their own ladder from waves 5, 7, 9, and 11 — see Enemies.

Wave shapes

From wave 4, roughly 45% of solo waves are dealt a shape that re-weights the archetype mix, the spawn distance, the size of the opening burst, and the trickle pacing. The remaining waves stay standard so the specials keep their identity, and the same shape never lands twice in a row. Every shape reuses the existing spawn machinery — no new enemy types or systems are involved.

Shape	Character	Asks the player to
Horde	~1.5× the budget, light units, close and fast, with a much tighter trickle	Back off, funnel them, and keep the magazine fed
Elite	Roughly half the budget, heavily armoured, most of it arriving at once, then quiet	Focus fire and make shots count
Siege	Sniper-heavy and spawning at longer range	Keep moving and break line of sight
Ambush	Spawns very close on all bearings with most of the budget up front	Spin up fast and check behind

A shaped wave announces itself through the same intro banner used for new enemy types. Previously every wave had an identical structure — the same opening burst, the same trickle, the same weighted mix from the same distance — so wave 30 was wave 8 with larger numbers.

Difficulty	Enemy health	Enemy damage	Spawn count	Enemy speed	Score multiplier
Easy	1.00×	0.90×	0.80×	0.70×	0.60×
Medium	1.40×	1.25×	1.00×	1.00×	1.00×
Hard	2.20×	1.85×	1.40×	1.50×	1.70×
Adaptive	1.30× initial	1.20× initial	1.00× initial	0.95× initial	1.30×

Adaptive mode periodically adjusts future enemy health, damage, spawn rate, and a smoothed speed target from recorded player performance.

Boss schedule

Boss timing is difficulty-scaled, not fixed at wave 10:

Difficulty	Boss era starts
Hard	Wave 5
Medium	Wave 7
Adaptive	Wave 8
Easy	Wave 10

From that point a boss is seeded every second wave, with a second boss on every fifth wave, and one every wave from wave 20 onward. Seeding one on literally every wave meant the apex threat stopped reading as an event by roughly wave 8, leaving no escalation beat left to spend. Before the boss era, every fifth wave adds a Crowned Elite Tank with four times health and three times score. See Enemies.

Combat, PvE, and PvP status

Combat is confirmed PvE: firearms, rockets, hacked enemies, hazards, and abilities damage enemy entities. Players can damage themselves with nearby explosive barrels, but there is no confirmed direct player-versus-player hit path wired from the gameplay loop.

The multiplayer lobby exposes Last Man Standing, and the networking layer has message shapes for player shots and kills. However, implementation evidence shows player death being caused by shared enemies; direct player-shot handling is not connected from App.tsx. Treat direct PvP combat as unconfirmed / not implemented, rather than assuming the label adds a deathmatch ruleset.

Score, combo, and streaks

Base kill values are Normal 10, Fast 15, Tank 30, Sniper 28, Boss 100, Revenant 65, Leaper 45, Splitter 50, Bulwark 55, and Howler 60. A Crowned Elite pays three times its underlying score. Destroying a Sentinel awards 150 before difficulty and run-modifier multipliers.

Kills less than two seconds apart grow both the combo and kill streak. Each chained kill adds combo × 5 points before the same score multipliers. Taking damage reduces an active combo; a normal wave transition resets the combo and streak unless the Streak Keeper perk was earned.

Run modifiers and wave perks

Classic mode offers three generated, daily-seeded Raise the Stakes cards. Each card comes from a distinct archetype—offense, fragility, horde, scarcity, precision, or chaos—and can change player damage or health, enemy health/damage/speed/spawn density, starting magazine size, or enforce headshots-only damage. The score multiplier is derived from the rolled risk and ranges from 1.25× to 2.75×.

After a solo wave, one of three Mystery Boxes contains a run perk. A picked perk lasts for that run; empty boxes award consolation weapon-mastery XP. Perks do not appear in multiplayer and do not persist between runs. See Game-Systems.

Death, respawn, and outcome

• Classic: health reaching zero ends the run immediately and shows the game-over screen. Restart begins a fresh run.
• Tutorial: damage is effectively disabled; it is a learning space, not a failure mode.
• Multiplayer: a defeated player enters spectator mode. The match manager ends Co-op Survival when all players are dead, or Last Man Standing when one of multiple players remains. There is no confirmed mid-match respawn implementation.
• Time-limited multiplayer: the host can enable a 60–1,800 second limit in 30-second increments. The UI displays remaining time; end-of-match authority is host-side.

Exploration

Each map is an open combat space with streamed terrain chunks, collision props, map-specific atmosphere, safe spawn clearance, and a player-centered tactical radar. Exploration supports tactical positioning rather than questing: trees and other collidable terrain block line of sight, bushes slow movement, barrels form both cover and hazards, and lava, toxic sludge, and ice pools apply damage or movement effects to the player and enemies alike. See World and AI.