FIELD MANUAL
How to play
The controls take seconds to learn. Winning requires timing, curved return shots, and knowing when your own swarm is worth risking.
1. Grow your swarm
Move through loose energy sparks to absorb them. A larger swarm gives you more material for attacking, but it also moves more slowly and is easier to hit.
2. Use the Tension Arc
Hold the left mouse button or Space. On touch, hold the ARC button. Your swarm compresses around the core and the charge ring fills. Aim, then release: part of your swarm flies outward and returns to your current position along a curved path. Move after firing to bend that return path into another rival.
3. Risk has a visible cost
The particles sent into an Arc temporarily leave your defence. A missed Arc returns surviving particles, but enemies can damage the detached group. A focused swarm takes less damage; permanent hiding is impossible because a fully charged Arc releases automatically.
4. Break three core layers
Strong hits against an exposed, weakened rival crack one protective layer. Crack all three to shatter that core. The defeated swarm drops energy and reboots after four seconds, while its match score remains.
5. Plan and evolve
Mutation Lab lets you choose two free mutations in every tier D–S. Evolution unlocks at 0:45, 1:45, 3:00, 4:30 and 5:45. A flashing badge waits until you open it; the arena never pauses. The fifteen upgrades reset after every run and cannot be purchased.
6. Survive the closing rift
Each of 100 arena combinations has a readable storm schedule. The safe zone contracts late in the seven-minute match. Outside it, your swarm leaks away and eventually your core layers begin to break.
7. Know who is human
In the realtime arena, real participants carry a LIVE label and computer-controlled fill carries an AI label. Practice and Daily Rift use AI only. Each multiplayer match is simulated authoritatively on the server at 20 ticks per second.