Manual
You aim, you fire.
Nothing casts until you press it, and every shot goes where the cursor points. The action-RPG way: your hotbar, your timing, your aim on the boss.
The game
A run is ten to fourteen minutes. You walk, the horde comes, and everything you pick up in between decides whether the boss at 10:00 is a fight or a formality. Here is all of it: how you move and aim, the five things a map asks of you, what drops and what it rolls, the cards the level-ups deal, the fifteen rungs of the ladder and the eleven bosses at the end of them.
Controls
Play with a mouse, a pad, or one hand on the keys.
Three attack modes on one key. Pick how much aiming you want to do, and change your mind mid-run.
Auto + manual aim
It fires, you aim.
Every skill fires the moment it is ready, at the point you are pointing at. You steer the damage; the game handles the trigger finger.
Auto
Just walk.
The hotbar fires itself at the nearest monster, the boss first. Both hands stay on the movement keys. Survivors pacing, with skills you chose and a build you built.
Mouse and keyboardWASD to move, the mouse to aim, six skills on the hotbar, Space to roll. A cat crosshair instead of an arrow.
ControllerGamepad support with its own settings page and the pad’s own button glyphs on the HUD: left stick moves, right stick aims (or the nearest enemy does), bumpers and triggers cast, A rolls, rumble on hits.
No mouse at allAuto mode plays with the movement keys alone. Kite, dodge, collect — the cat shoots. Same for a phone, where a thumb is the stick.
Quests
Nothing on this map is scenery.
Every quest is hidden until you walk into it. Each one pays in cards, coins and loot — and each one you fail costs ten percent of your damage for the rest of the run.
Hold the zone
Stand in it and packs march in formation, elite-led, the last one biggest. Step out for three seconds and it is lost.
Siege
Three waves from every side, then the Siege Lord: twice the size, and a war horn that puts the survivors back on their feet.
Escort
A survivor follows you to the campfire. Every nova, beam and pool that can hit you can hit them.
Hold the pass
A palisade across a real cut in the rock, a shrine behind it, forty seconds of walkers — and they come from behind it too. Ten get through and it falls.
Dark ritual
Five totems around an altar that summons something every two seconds. Break them all before the fuse, or meet what it was making.
Bounty
A WANTED elite that bolts the moment it sees you and keeps running. Sixty seconds, and its purse is enormous.
The Collector
Find five of something the stall by the camp wants. No clock, no fail state — and three run levels the moment you bring them back.
MORE SOONMore quest kinds are on the way.
Also out there: shrines, keys and hidden vaults, runestones that wake at a touch, exp tornados, bat swarms — and, once all four zones are yours, the master zone: the Warden's three trials, ending with your own shadow, for a guaranteed legendary.
Loot
One drop a minute. Luck decides what.
Drops are on a clock, not a per-kill lottery: one a minute, twice as often while you are still small. Luck barely moves how many. It moves how good.
Eleven slots. Every base carries a signature stat of its own, and the ladder of bases marches with your level — the Leather Cap retires the day the Kabuto shows up.
Item level is your level. Nine drops in ten you can wear now; the tenth waits in the bag for you. Magic and better roll +N to a skill; legendaries always do.
One unique per skill. The Pyre Wand is strong on its own — and with Fire Bolt maxed it fires three bolts in a spread. Max the skill, then find the item that rewrites it.
Boons
Three cards. Every run level. Gone at the end.
A run level deals three cards. Pick one. They stack for the whole run and vanish with it — so the same cat plays a different build every time, and a good one can reach the final boss on a fresh save through cards alone.
+25% fire damage
15% chance to cast skills twice
Heal 2 HP per kill
Odds: magic one in three, rare one in ten, legendary one in a hundred — and luck multiplies everything above common, up to three times over. Reroll a hand, banish a card for the whole run, or skip it for coins.
Commit. Pyromancy pays more than plain Damage at the same rarity. The game rewards a cat that picks a lane and stays in it.
The fifteen uniques one in two thousand per card, each once per run
Twin SoulEvery skill casts twice, but mana costs +40%.
Phoenix HeartOnce this run: death revives you at 60% HP and everything around you burns.
Chronomancer's EyeCooldowns halved, +30% cast speed.
Midas Touch+200% coins, +10 luck.
SoulstormKills heal 3, restore 3 mana and burst for 15% of the victim's max HP.
Titan's Grip+60% attack size, projectiles pierce two more enemies.
Grand Mastery+2 levels to every active skill for this run.
Glass Cannon+75% damage, +25% cast speed, but 40% less max HP.
OverdriveThe whole world runs 25% faster, and your damage +40%.
Blood PactKills heal 6 and your damage +25%, but 25% less max HP.
Colossus+100% max HP, +50% attack size, but you walk 15% slower.
ExecutionerRegular enemies below 15% HP die instantly; bosses and elites resist.
Cat’s GraceA third dodge charge, and every charge comes back 40% faster.
Phantom StepRoll out of roots, chills and stuns — and 50% further.
Full HandEvery pick for the rest of the run deals four cards instead of three.
Dying
You will die. That is the loop.
A run is short, the horde wins eventually, and what you carry out of a death is the whole point. No lost run is a wasted one.
NormalThe baseline. Beat a stage here to unlock the next one and its Nightmare.
NightmareEvery monster attacks with an element, resists one, and carries half again its health. Elites everywhere.
HellHalf your armour, your resistances stripped, one monster in ten immune to something — and potions drop half as often.What hunts you, stage by stageThe Fairy Forest: toadstools, pixies, bog toads, thorn boars · The Desert: sand vipers, wasp swarms, scorpions, jackal packs, tumbleweeds, vultures, dust devils · The Abyss: household horrors: live wires, spray bottles, a haunted vacuum · The White Cube: the art itself: paint stains, marble busts, a melting clock, pop-art, origami · The Feed: trolls, followers, spam bots, captcha golems, the Notification.
Bosses
Epic boss fights. Every attack telegraphed.
You will still get hit. The second of each pair is the stage’s whole exam.
