How to play
You are at the bottom of a ship with five decks between you and the surface. Each deck is a set of rooms joined by corridors, and somewhere on it is a hatch. The hatch only opens once every crawler on the deck is dead. Clear the deck, walk onto the hatch, and you go up one. Leave the fifth deck and you have made the surface.
You see almost nothing. A faint glow around you shows about an arm's length of floor and wall. Firing the gun lights the whole area around you for one instant and holds that instant on screen as a cold blue picture. The real room carries on in the dark while you look at it. The counter at the top of the screen tells you how many seconds old the picture is, and over nine seconds it rots away, the far edges first, until it reads NO PICTURE.
The match is the other light. It is warm and live, so it shows crawlers where they really are, but it is small, lasts under three seconds, and goes out the moment you take a step. You can take three hits. Lose the third and you restart at the top of the deck you died on, with the rounds and matches you arrived with. You never go back to deck one.
Tips and strategy
- Crawlers do not see you. They go to the last light they noticed. A shot alerts every crawler with a clear line to you within a long range and keeps them coming for about six seconds. A match reaches half as far for half as long. Fire, then move off the spot.
- Up close it is different. A crawler within a few steps that has a clear line to you stops guessing and charges at nearly your walking speed. Do not let them get that close in a corridor.
- Holding Shift keeps your aim fixed while you move, at about two thirds of normal speed. Use it to back down a corridor with the gun still on the room.
- One bullet kills a crawler, and bullets stop dead at walls.
- The hatch shows up in a flash picture as a teal square even before the deck is clear, so one early shot tells you where you are heading. In the warm light it only appears once the last crawler is down.
- Rounds matter for score. Reaching the hatch pays 500 plus 25 for every round still in the gun, against 100 per kill. Careful shooting is worth more than spraying.
- A deck has the same layout every time, so after a death you already know the rooms.
What's in it
- Five decks. Each has more rooms and more crawlers than the last, from five crawlers on deck one to nine on deck five, 35 in all.
- One enemy, the crawler. It wanders between rooms, heads for light, and charges when it is close and can reach you.
- Three lights: the flash, the match, and the glow you always carry.
- Three or four pickups on each deck. Ammo boxes give five rounds and matchbooks give two matches. One of them is always a matchbook; the rest are ammo.
- You start with 12 rounds and 4 matches. Arriving on a new deck tops you up to at least 6 rounds and 2 matches.
Questions
Does dying send me back to the start?
No. Every deck is a checkpoint. Dying puts you at the top of that deck with full health and whatever you were carrying when you first walked onto it.
Do I need a mouse?
No. Arrows or W A S D move you, and the gun points the way you last walked, in eight directions. Z or Space fires, and X or F strikes a match. With a mouse, you aim at the pointer, left click fires and right click strikes a match.
How do I reload?
You don't. There is no reload and no magazine. Every round you have is in the bar at the bottom left, and the only way to get more is to pick up ammo boxes or reach a new deck.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. On a phone or tablet the site adds an on-screen pad: arrows to move, plus FIRE, MATCH and OK buttons. A keyboard still gives you the finest control.
Does it save my progress?
No. Checkpoints last for the session only. Closing the page starts you again on deck one.