Four players run the road with the storm wall at their backs, and the storm's shades step out of the purple and give chase.
A storm is coming down the canyon, and it swallows whatever stops. So you don't. You and up to five friends set out from your floating outpost and walk the road ahead of it: through forest and grass, past wrecked camps, deer and the things that hunt them.
How a run plays:
Walk the road while the storm wall rolls in behind you. Clearings hold it back for a moment; the road never does.
Grab what you pass: sticks, rocks, flint, grass, apples, bodies to search, crates to break, iron in the canyon walls.
Watch your belly. Walking burns food, sprinting burns more, and a full backpack slows you down. Keep it full and it heals you, a little at a time.
Reach an extractor. Shrines send single items home; the big waygates take you, and everything you carry, back to your base.
Die out there and what you carried stays out there.
Thornwick Village: the party brawls with Strawmen in the square while a hound circles in to bite.
Hounds that circle and dart in. Scarecrows with pitchforks. Bundles of sticks shaped like men that only move when you look away. Fight them together, or run.
Each hand fights on its own: left click, right click. Punch, chop, slash, stab.
Spears and knives can be thrown: hold to wind up, let go.
Everyone is an active ragdoll, you too. Get knocked flat or dragged off by a grabber, then get up and get back in.
You learn to fight by surviving: green hands flail, a Brawler throws a real jab and cross, a Fighter swings like they mean it, and a Veteran chains combos.
On the road, a grabber comes out of the storm after the one at the back and hauls them toward it.
Hollow Hounds run a player down the road at a gallop, fall in at their pace and circle, then one darts in.
Greyhallow Manor: one player squares up to the Porcelain Servant on the road under the manor walls while the others fight Strawmen behind.
Every extractor stands in one of five abandoned places, each with its own creatures and its own loot: a hunters' camp gone quiet, Thornwick Village and the bell nobody should ring, a ring of watching stones, Greyhallow Manor and its graves, and the Old Arena. Further down the road they come round again, tougher and richer.
Hunters' Hollow: Hollow Hounds and Twig Stalkers among the hide tents.
Thornwick Village: Strawmen, lantern moths, and the Bellwether, who rings its bell for more.
The Eye Stones: Moss Brutes that charge. Sidestep them.
Greyhallow Manor: the Porcelain Servant, and the Lady in the Veil, who steps out of the air behind you.
The Old Arena: Arena Shades with shields, and the Champion, who guards the way home.
The Old Arena: on the sand under the banners, a spear fighter takes on the shield-bearing Arena Shades while the Champion, horned and caped, waits by the gate.
Down the lane into Thornwick Village: thatched huts, hay bales, and the bell post in the middle of the square.
Round the sand of the Old Arena behind the Champion, horned helm and shield up, as it turns on whoever came through the gate.
The two ways home: an offering shrine sends what you put in it to your base; a waygate wakes as you come near and takes you, and all you carry, home.
Behind the guardians stand the waygates. Step through with your party and your haul lands in your base's Extraction Box, waiting for you. Overfill it and the rest spills onto your floor in pouches, but not for long, so empty it before you head out again.
In Thornwick Village a Strawman you've never killed reads "???". Bring it down with the axe and the next one's plate shows its name; then the pause menu's Bestiary opens on its page.
You won't know what something is until you've brought one down. Look right at a creature to see its portrait and health; until you kill one, its name is just "???". After that its name, where it lives, how it fights and what it drops go into your Bestiary in the pause menu.
At the workbench: grass in the backpack becomes twine, and twine, a stick and flint become a stone spear. Click what you made to see its card.
Start in a dried-grass shirt with a stick. Craft your way up: deer pelt clothes, wooden armour, stone tools, then iron from the canyon walls for axes, swords, pickaxes and spears you can throw.
A Tetris backpack: every item has a shape. Click any item to see what it is and what it does.
Sew pouches onto your backpack to grow it in any direction.
Coats and breeches with pockets give you quick-bar slots.
Armour counts: every piece takes a share off each hit (a wooden set and a helmet stop about a fifth of it). Gear up before you go far, even on a new character.
Full controller support in every inventory screen: step item to item, pick up, turn, put down.
Sewing a pouch onto the backpack: red where it won't fit, gold where it will. Click, and the bag grows new cells on that side.
Out of the backpack: a grass shirt onto the body, a stone axe into the right hand and a knife into the left.
Build mode in your base: the workbench's ghost follows where you look, turns square with the scroll wheel, and sets down clear of the wall where you click.
Home is a floating platform under a violet sky. Every player in the party has a base on it with a chest, a bed and a workbench they furnish themselves. Ready up at the signpost and walk into the portal together.
Round the outpost under a violet sky: the floating platform, the portal to the run, and your base across the bridge.
Six players, each dressed their own way, run the road out of the canyon with the storm towering behind them.
1 to 6 players in online co-op. Join a friend mid-run.
Proximity voice chat: hear the people near you, pick your microphone, set the volume or turn it off.
Make your character: skin, eyes, face. Their face follows your voice when you talk.
Tips that teach the basics as you play (turn them off any time), a Field Guide and a Bestiary in the pause menu.
