Halden City · present day
A city block sealed itself at four minutes to midnight. Four people are inside. This page holds what is known. The rest is under the pavement.
01 · The Block
A hotdog cart. An arcade cabinet. A pub with hanging baskets, a clock tower nobody winds, and vending machines nobody restocks. Nobody has to. They refill themselves, which nobody thinks about.
The block sits on the edge of the old rail yards, and the city walks past it the way you walk past a thing that has always been there. It is, by every measure that matters to a city, nothing.
Under it, something hums.
02 · The Record
In 1944 a private wartime consortium operating under the name GREYLINE leased the rail depot at and began sub-surface works of undisclosed purpose. Site designation: OUTPOST 9.
In the spring of 1945 the depot was lost into its own basement. Personnel on site, garrison, officers and works crew alike, were recorded as .
By order of the site was struck from every register, deed and map. The city paved it over.
[REMAINDER OF FILE MISSING · 80 YEARS]
03 · Friday Night
Marrow Group, the developer that quietly inherited Greyline’s patents, is putting its new tower on the block. Foundation piles, drilled on a Friday night, straight through the old cap.
What happened next took less than an hour. The ground started humming loud enough to file complaints about. The buried got up and started digging. And an eighty-year-old failsafe did exactly what it was built to do: steel shutters nobody remembers installing slammed down around the block, and they will not lift while the vein is open.
Four people are inside. None of them can leave.
One of them signed the drilling
order.
04 · The Four
THE SWAT
Halden PD riot squad, breach specialist. Three commendations, four suspensions, same four incidents. When the shutters started falling, his unit was ordered back. His earpiece was full of static. He has decided, permanently, that he never heard the order.
“Shift’s not over, diggers. Clock back in.”
THE WORKER
Twenty-six years of city maintenance under this exact block. He has personally fixed the self-refilling vending machines four times without once asking the obvious question. On Friday night, his crew ran the foundation drill. He calls what happened a management failure.
“Tenants are up. Nobody filed a complaint, but here we are.”
THE SUIT
Head of “Legacy Assets” at Marrow Group, the little department that quietly owns everything Greyline left behind. He moved the drilling schedule himself, and he was on-site when the shutters fell. He keeps calling it “the product demonstration”. Nobody has asked him what the product is.
“Gentlemen, the demonstration is resuming. Do participate.”
THE ADVENTURER
Mountain guide, third generation. His grandfather worked this block in 1945, one of the few who walked away, and he spent the rest of his life on a mountain writing the Keeper’s Rules: numbered, practical, strange little laws for surviving storms. Elias came to Halden to scatter his ashes. The shutters fell while he stood on the pavement, urn in hand.
“Rule one: a storm is never weather.”
05 · The Hum
The consortium called the energy in the vein the Thrum, and they believed it was the spark that keeps a body moving. They bottled it. They soaked rifle steel in it. And in the workshops under the block, they wired it into machines that should not exist.
Some of those machines still work. Some of them fit in two hands. The block gives them up rarely, and the chalk prices on the walls do not apply.
What Greyline actually found down there, and what is at the bottom of the vein, is not written on any page that survived. You will dig it up in the run. Or you won’t.
Part two
Everything below is how the game actually works: captured in-game, numbers straight from the simulation. Every system is here. The block’s secrets are not.
Rounds
The dead come in rounds. Clear one, breathe for a few seconds, the next one is bigger. There is no wave counter to beat. The run ends when the crew does.
They get faster
Early rounds shuffle. From round 5 some of them trot, from round 10 the pool runs. And once a round is down to its last body, it sprints straight at you. Hunting the straggler is dead time, so it comes to you.
Solo & co-op
Alone, with a code, or matchmade: up to four. If you bleed out fully you spectate until the next round, then redeploy with the starter pistol; points and kills stay. Pausing a co-op run is a crew vote, not a dictate.
Points are the only currency inside a run. Every hit prints them, every door, gun and machine spends them. Low-damage guns need more hits per kill, which is why the starter pistol is the best money printer you will ever hold.
+10
per hit
+60
kill, total
+100
headshot kill
+130
knife kill
+10
per plank repaired
Where you hit matters everywhere: heads take extra, arms and legs take less. Snipers live and die by the multiplier.
Six classes, two ways to buy, two slots to carry. You hold one weapon and stash one more, switched with Q. Heavier guns slow you down a touch; the scoreboard doesn’t care.
SIDEARM
P-9
The starter. Prints points early.
SMG
K-7 SMG
Rate of fire over range.
ASSAULT RIFLE
Ranger AR
The all-rounder.
SHOTGUN
Trencher
The doorway argument.
LMG
Big Iron LMG
A hundred rounds of no.
SNIPER
Longshot SR
One line, many heads.
Specials
Beyond the six classes there is a shelf of specials that no wall sells: Greyline workshop pieces, coil-wound and wrong in the best way. The box decides who gets one. Some are unique: one per run, and it stays yours until you fully bleed out.
Greyline soaked rifle steel in the vein, and the Punch-o-Matic that did it still breathes. Feed it your weapon and 5000 points and it comes back improved beyond specification. More damage, bigger magazines, and a new name: every gun in the game has a punched form.
Needs the power on · one punch at a time · collect it before the horde does
Greyline bottled the hum for its garrison, and the vending prototypes are still plumbed into the vein. Four machines, four permanent buffs, held until you go down, which dumps every perk you drank. They need the power on.
IronBrew
2500
Hardens you from 100 to 250 health. The difference between two hits and five.
QuickFix Cola
3000
You revive teammates in half the time, and if the horde puts you down, you get yourself back up once.
Sprint Soda
2000
Permanently faster on your feet (+13%). The gap between you and the hands behind you.
Hammer Ale
1500
Reloads in half the time, and barricade planks go up twice as fast.
The map is bought open
The block starts small. Doors and blocked passages carry chalk prices like everything else. Pay with E and a new district, with its own wallbuys and machines, is everyone’s. Opening a door also opens it for the horde: every purchase is a decision about geometry. The block holds two of them so far. More districts are coming.
Windows are the front line
The dead climb in through the windows, six planks per frame, tearing one plank at a time. Stand at a frame and hold E to rebuild it, +10 a plank. A rebuilt window is time, and time is the only thing the block sells cheap.
The knife
V or right-click. Highest payout in the game (+130) and it one-taps the early rounds. Round one is traditionally settled with steel to fund round five.
Grenades
G throws at your cursor. You start each run with two and the block hands a few back every round. They clear crowds, they open space around a downed friend, and yes, they hurt you too. Respect the blast.
Stamina
SPACE sprints from a stamina pool. Run it dry and your legs lock for a moment, usually the worst moment. The bar refills when you walk; Sprint Soda and a few Bunker crafts stretch it.
The horde scales with the crew: more players, more bodies per round. Shoot their legs off and they keep coming, crawling, slower, still lethal at your ankles.
And they choose. Every crew colour pulls the horde differently; it is baked into their pathfinding. White is the strongest magnet, green the weakest. If you wear white, you are not imagining it: they really are all coming to you. Use it. The magnet kites, the others hold the guns.
WHITE
magnet
BLUE
strong
YELLOW
mild
GREEN
calm
Boss round
Every few rounds, the horde stays down and something older comes up instead: a corroded brass diving suit with nothing dry inside it. A Sump Diver round is its own round. No shamblers underneath, just the divers and what they tear off themselves to throw at you. They hit like the door of a bank vault, they do not hurry, and the round ends only when the last of the family is down. Clearing it pays the crew a full Max Ammo, on the spot where the last one fell.
You’ll hear the hoses before you see him.
Points die with the run. Scrap doesn’t. The Bunker, off the main menu, is where scrap becomes permanent gear: the bench crafts it, the loadout carries it, the market trades it.
How scrap is earned
Scrap enters through spending points: doors, wallbuys, ammo, perks, the box, the Punch-o-Matic. Every 3000 points spent buys one hidden roll at a 30% chance; a hit drops a scrap ingot worth 1 for every ten rounds deep, rounded up: one through round 10, two through 20. At most 5 ingots per player per round. Spending IS the mine.
The loadout
You carry at most 4 crafts into a run, picked in the Bunker beforehand. Charges sit on keys 5 to 8, one key per slot, and each kind fires once per round. Charges stack as a supply across runs; passives and attachments are consumed by the run that uses them.
Gates
Every recipe needs a profile level, and the strongest also demand a mark in the Ledger: a LEDGER tag below means the bench will not sell it until the named achievement family is yours. Levels come from playing; the Ledger comes from playing well.
Applied for the whole run, consumed by the lobby. Craft once, carry, spend.
Dry Boots
40 SCRAP
Stamina regenerates 15 % faster
LV 2
Deep Lungs
50 SCRAP
Sprinting drains 15 % less stamina
LV 3
Cold Start
60 SCRAP
Sprint starts on a nearly empty bar
LV 4
Long Stride
60 SCRAP
Exhaustion lock 3 s → 2 s
LV 5
Sea Legs
180 SCRAP
No speed penalty from weapon weight
LV 11 · LEDGER arsenal 25
Iron Ration
120 SCRAP
Health regenerates 30 % faster
LV 5
Field Dressing
130 SCRAP
Regeneration starts 1 s sooner
LV 7
Tourniquet
110 SCRAP
Bleedout 45 s → 60 s
LV 9 · LEDGER no down 10
Cold Water
220 SCRAP
25 % less damage from sprinters
LV 16 · LEDGER hold 30
Oiled Action
60 SCRAP
Weapon swap 25 % faster
LV 6
Deep Pockets
100 SCRAP
+1 grenade at spawn
LV 8 · LEDGER boom 250
Steady Hands
100 SCRAP
20 % less spread while standing still
LV 9
Hard Cast
260 SCRAP
Penetration keeps 65 % damage instead of 50 %
LV 18 · LEDGER arsenal 40
Gutting Knife
70 SCRAP
Melee reach 40 → 55
LV 4 · LEDGER blade 5
Cannery Hook
190 SCRAP
Melee damage 150 → 200
LV 14 · LEDGER knife 1k
Sorter's Hands
90 SCRAP
Box spin 30 % faster, longer claim window
LV 7 · LEDGER box 50
Scrapper's Eye
100 SCRAP
Powerups linger 45 s instead of 30
LV 10 · LEDGER drops 100
Machinist's Touch
110 SCRAP
Punch-o-Matic works 40 % faster
LV 10 · LEDGER pap first
Short Shift
60 SCRAP
Co-op respawn half a round earlier
LV 6
Long Reach
90 SCRAP
Revive from twice the distance
LV 6 · LEDGER revive 1
Second Pair of Hands
100 SCRAP
Revive 20 % faster
LV 8 · LEDGER revive 50
Field Medic
170 SCRAP
A hit no longer interrupts your revive
LV 12 · LEDGER triage
Harpoon Lore
150 SCRAP
+15 % damage against a Sump Diver
LV 13 · LEDGER diver 50
Stack as a supply that survives many runs. Fired mid-run on keys 5 to 8; one of each kind may fire per round.
Off the Books
200 SCRAP
Invisible to zombies for 15 s
LV 6
Dead Air
180 SCRAP
Every zombie loses track of you for 8 s
LV 8
Slipway
260 SCRAP
Teleport out of a grab to a safe point
LV 7
Shift Ticket
380 SCRAP
Revive yourself once
LV 10 · LEDGER no down 10
Foreman's Whistle
550 SCRAP
Revive every downed player, perks intact
LV 8 · LEDGER hold 40
Sump Gas
280 SCRAP
Zombies nearby drop to crawlers
LV 14 · LEDGER diver 10
Undertow
320 SCRAP
Every zombie drops to walker speed for 20 s
LV 11
Low Tide
340 SCRAP
No new zombies spawn for 20 s
LV 13 · LEDGER hold 25
Cold Store
380 SCRAP
Freeze every zombie on the map for 10 s
LV 12 · LEDGER hold 30
Greyline Call
420 SCRAP
Every zombie walks away from you for 20 s
LV 18 · LEDGER hold 50
Spare Key
150 SCRAP
Open one door without paying points
LV 8 · LEDGER doors 100
Chain Shot
240 SCRAP
Next 30 shots penetrate without limit
LV 13 · LEDGER arsenal 25
Last Call
260 SCRAP
Reloads are instant for 60 s
LV 12 · LEDGER teetotal 25
First Round's On Me
250 SCRAP
One random perk: only before round 5
LV 9
Bolted to every weapon you touch, all run. Every one of them pays for its bonus with a drawback.
Foregrip
150 SCRAP
−15 % spread · +10 % reload time
LV 4
Extended Mag
260 SCRAP
+25 % magazine · −20 % reserve
LV 8
Port Choke
200 SCRAP
Tighter pellet spread · −15 % range
LV 9 · LEDGER arsenal 10
Quick Release
280 SCRAP
−20 % reload time · −15 % reserve
LV 10
Harbour Sight
320 SCRAP
+12 % headshot zone · −8 % hipfire accuracy
LV 13 · LEDGER heads 5k
Bored Barrel
400 SCRAP
+8 % damage · −10 % fire rate
LV 12 · LEDGER arsenal 25
The Market, exactly
Cosmetics & what’s coming
The Ledger dresses you for free: every achievement family you complete unlocks its calling card, its coin and its title, worn from the profile card in the menu. A store for skins is on the way and will follow the same law as everything else here: cosmetic only, licensed not owned, and covered by the Terms.
Nothing on the bench or the market grants power over other players. It sharpens your run, never theirs.
Greyline is carved into 129 plots of playable ground, and every plot has exactly one deed. The registry lives in the menu: browse the plots on the real map, see who holds what, and buy open deeds with USDC. A deed does one thing, and does it forever: it collects the ground rent.
The deed
Plots are priced by their ground, from $100 in the far corners to $800 on the spawn square. One holder per plot, 129 holders in the world at most. The registry shows every plot as it is in the game: the walkable ground lit, the boundary drawn, the holder named.
Ground rent
Every 100 kills made on a plot, by anyone, in any run, pay its deed holder 1 scrap. Rent accrues from the moment you buy, never backdated, and is collected in the registry with one press. When a crew works your ground, the game tells you: live if you are online, as a card in the menu if you were away.
Selling on
A deed is bench-market goods like any other: list it from the market's sell tab at your own price (every listing floors at $0.10), and the buyer takes the deed and the rent with it. The usual split applies: the seller keeps 90%. Standing rent is paid out to you the moment you list, so nothing you earned rides along.
Field note
There are radios that answer E. There is chalk nobody admits to writing, machines that hum louder some nights, and at least one thing under the pavement with a name. None of it is required. None of it is explained here. If the block wants you to know, it will tell you mid-run, and if you find something, the crew will say so out loud.
Every binding below is the default; all of them can be changed in Settings.
The same run, one hand fewer. Either thumb walks: the stick has a home ring in each bottom corner, so the hand the horde leaves free is the one that runs. Sprint engages by itself at full deflection. There is no aim stick: touch the world and the shot goes there, lightly assisted. Hold the grenade and your finger marks the landing spot; a short tap on your own character presses use. The right side holds swap, reload, knife and grenade; buy prompts appear as a tappable pill.
Plug in or pair a PS5 or Xbox pad, on desktop or on the phone, and move a stick: the run hands it the controls on the first input. Touching the screen, the mouse or a key takes them straight back. No setup, no toggle. The menus speak pad too: d-pad or stick moves the focus, Cross or A confirms, Circle or B backs out. Every button below is the default; rebind them in Settings while a pad is connected.
Rebind any key, tune sound and display. ESC opens the same panel mid-run. The title screen keeps the rest of your record:
