Survival unlocks Bomb Tiers & Ink Capacity.
0m: Green | 3m: Blue | 7m: Yellow
12m: Pink | 16m: Violet

DRAG to move the Strain across the system
HOLD still + TAP to plant a BOMBS — hold longer = bigger tier
DOUBLE TAP to Detonate all active Bombs

Ink powers your Bombs. Without it you can only move.
1. Stand still to Meditate — passive regen slowly refills the tank
2. Detonate Bombs — blast energy converts back to ink
3. Upgrade regen speed and capacity permanently at the Safehouse

SCRIBBLE RING: Chasers — Basic pursue-and-terminate. Herd them into traps.
New daemon types arrive over your first 5 minutes — one every ~20 seconds.
DASHED RING: Ghosts — Phase through your barriers. Flicker in and out. [0:20]
SPIDER: Crawlers — Fast zig-zag scuttlers that hunt in packs of three. [0:35]
WAVY LINE: Worms — Smash barriers and leave corrupted sectors. [0:50]
TOOTHED RING: Drinkers — Touch you to drain ink. Keep distance. [1:10]
WINGED FRAME: Bats — Swoop in erratic curving arcs. [1:30]
BOILING SQUARE: Spawners — Stationary. Pulse web-grids that slow your movement. [1:50]
TATTERED CLOAK: Wraiths — Fade out, then blink in close beside you. [2:15]
DIAMOND: Duelists — Elite units. Trigger a Quickdraw standoff on approach. [2:40]
FUNNEL: Cleaners — Vacuum fluid puddles and break your Chroma combos. [3:10]
SINGLE EYE: Watchers — Keep their distance, flare up, then LUNGE. Sidestep it. [3:35]
CRACKED HEXAGON: Splitters — Shatter into two fast shards when destroyed. [4:00]
SCOPE TRIANGLE: Snipers — Fire a laser from the edge. Place a bomb in its path to reflect it. [4:25]
CROSS FRAME: Architects — Hijack your HUD as a physical shield. Detonate near them. [4:45]
Every daemon is a glowing neon wireframe in its own random colour — even two of the same kind differ. Tell them apart by SHAPE, not colour.

Every run — Story and High Run — is a purge. SYNAPSE CORP injected rival strains beside you; only one leaves the mainframe.
RIVAL STRAINS: glowing energy sparks with a name tag and a health ring. They hunt, circle, plant mines, dodge your bombs and avoid daemons. They fight each other too.
PURGE ZONE: a red-washed area outside a glowing circle. It starts closing after ~45s and shrinks in 5 stages. A dashed white circle previews where it will end up — run there. Outside it you take rising damage (4 → 18 per second); rivals do too. At the final circle it keeps tightening, so nobody can stall.
RIVAL MINES: a dashed ring around a blinking square. It blows after a short fuse — 20 damage to you, 40 to rivals (the planter is immune), and it also shreds ordinary daemons. Step out of the ring.
ELIMINATING RIVALS: your bombs hurt them by blast size (a Violet bomb or a Blackhole kills outright; Blackholes also pull them in). Each takedown: score, a Glory Fragment and a kill-feed line. Format Wipe deals 50 to every rival; Overclock freezes them for 4s.
HUD (bottom-left): STRAINS ALIVE, round, your eliminations, the zone timer, and the feed of who killed who.
WINNING: clear every rival to win the round for a score bonus, Glory Fragments and +35 HP. STORY: 3 rounds (7, 9, then 11 rivals) — clearing round 3 is the victory ending. HIGH RUN: endless — each round brings more rivals and a faster zone.
PLACEMENT: if you fall, your finishing place (#3 of 8, etc.) is shown on the game-over screen and your best is kept in STATS. The purge arms once the tutorial phase is over.

Approach a Yellow Duelist and it calls a standoff — all enemies freeze.
"[ ! ] HOLD STILL" — Stay perfectly still. Do not move yet.
"[ ! ] SLICK MOVE!" — Drag your character in any direction immediately.
React before the signal and you lose. React after and you win.

Shift palette to change how your ink physically behaves:
CYAN (Conductive): Speed +25%. Detonations arc lightning through stains.
LIME (Corrosive): Melts elite armour. Duelists become vulnerable.
PINK (Volatile): Enemies lose aggro briefly. Detonations release 3× thermobaric waves.
NOIR (Tar): Slows all entities 50%. Your bombs become sticky traps.

Synapse Corp's centipede security protocol. 10 colour-coded segments.
Each segment only takes damage from a bomb detonated inside a stain
matching its exact colour.
Blackhole Singularities bypass the colour-matching rule entirely.

Certain Chapters trigger a weapon heist — you steal from Synapse Corp's own armoury.
A gold EXPERIMENTAL WEAPON pickup spawns nearby. Move over it to collect.
Grants ~10s of max-tier bombs and unlimited ink — burn through it.

[C] Chroma Shift   [R] Cycle Radio   [P/ESC] Pause
[F] Format Wipe — requires full ink + max WANTED ★5
[O] Overclock — purchase from BITE at the Safehouse
[S] Open Safehouse (menu only)

Every kill and hit raises your WANTED level.
At ★5 the Laser Firewall activates — the arena shrinks and burns.
Safe Zones appear periodically. Stand inside for 3 seconds to clear all stars.
Format Wipe (★5 + full ink) wipes the current sector and resets the hunt.

Synapse Corp's nuclear counter-virus. Written specifically to destroy you.
Immune to instant kills — pound it with repeated bomb blasts.
Purging it drops Glory Fragments and a massive score bonus.
It only appears when you've done enough damage to warrant their worst weapon.

An unallocated memory sector your allies control.
CIPHER — The chemist. Upgrades your ink capacity and regen.
BITE — The weapons engineer. Unlocks Format mods and Overclock.
RESONANCE — The DJ. Each radio station gets a permanent bonus when purchased.
Spend Glory Fragments ◈ to evolve permanently across runs.