How to play Horde

Horde

A night field thirty-six cells square, drawn from the seed, with eight blocks of cover to put between you and what is coming. Survive longer than everybody else and the round is yours. The horde goes for whoever is nearest, so nobody has to touch you to beat you: they only have to be further away than you are.

Play Horde Leaderboard

The field

The field is thirty-six cells square, so it is the same field whichever way up your phone is, and the camera follows your survivor.
Eight blocks of cover are drawn from the seed, none of them next to anybody's starting place. Walkers cannot walk through them and a shot cannot be fired through them.
Everybody starts on a ring around the middle, spaced as evenly as the seats allow, and a fresh field is drawn for every round.
A supply crate appears at an open point every second wave. Walking over one takes it, and it is gone: if your gun is already at its best you have still denied it to somebody else.
The field is public. It is on your page before the round starts, and the bot is looking at the same eight blocks.

Walking and shooting

Nothing moves until every survivor has pressed Ready. Three seconds after that the first wave comes, and nothing you press before it counts.
On a phone your left thumb walks and your right thumb aims and fires while you hold it. Anywhere on the field is a stick: it appears under the thumb that lands there.
On a desktop W, A, S and D walk, the mouse aims and its button fires, and the arrow keys aim for anybody without a mouse.
A shot goes into the direction you are aiming and takes the nearest walker within seven cells that is actually in front of you, and never through a block.
The gun reloads between shots, and there are four levels of it. Every crate is a level, and a better gun reloads quicker, hits harder or takes more than one walker at a time.
Aiming at nothing still costs a shot. Holding the aim with nothing in range does not.

The horde

Waves arrive on a clock: four walkers in the first, three more in every wave after it, ten seconds apart at the start and four seconds apart by the end.
Walkers are slow and take one shot. Runners are quick and arrive from the third wave. Brutes are slower than walkers, take four shots and arrive from the fourth.
Every fourth wave the whole horde is a shot tougher than it was, so a round does not become easier as your gun improves.
At most forty are on the field at once. The rest wait at the edge until there is room, which is what stops a long round becoming a wall.
The horde walks around cover rather than into it, so a block buys you a corner to turn, not a hiding place.
A walker that reaches you bites, and it knocks you back and leaves you untouchable for a moment. Three bites and you are down for the round.

How a round ends

The round ends when one survivor is left standing, or when the last one goes down, or after three minutes, whichever comes first.
Being down does not end your round: the field keeps playing, the camera follows whoever is still standing, and where you finish depends on how long you lasted.
Survivors still standing are placed by the walkers they dropped, then by the bites they had left. The ones who went down are placed by how long they lasted, latest first.
A round stopped at three minutes is placed the same way. A round with anybody left in it rarely gets near that.

The match

First to two rounds wins, and a match is at most five rounds. Level after five is a draw.
Everybody is on the field at once, so the site's move deadline of five minutes is only a dead man's switch: if nothing happens at all for that long the match is abandoned and nobody is rated.
A player who resigns is out of the match. At two seats that ends it; at three or four the others play on, and a fresh field is drawn for the seats that are left. A match with nobody left in it is over rather than played out by the bots.
A survivor whose connection drops is walked by the bot within half a second and is theirs again the moment they are back. Somebody away for two rounds in a row forfeits their seat; somebody whose phone dropped for a few seconds keeps their result.

Worth knowing before you start

Horde needs a live connection. If your browser or network cannot open one the page says so rather than offering a field that cannot be walked.
The field runs on the server twenty-five times a second, and your page runs the same simulation over your own presses, so your survivor answers the thumb in the frame you moved it.
If your connection hiccups the server is right and your page slides your survivor across to where the server has it, rather than jumping it.
Leading the horde past somebody is the whole game between survivors. You cannot shoot each other and you can walk through each other, so the only way to use a rival is to be further from the horde than they are.
The bot walks at one of three strengths, drawn per match from the seed. The weakest freezes for a second at a time and walks into things; the strongest reacts several times a second and keeps its distance.
On a phone, adding the site to your home screen gives the field the whole screen. On Android there is a full screen button on the field itself.

The field, every starting place and the whole horde are drawn from the game's seed before a single wave arrives, and the seed is published when the match ends, so anybody can replay a match and check that no wave was invented for anybody. Every round is simulated on the server from each survivor's own walking and aiming, which are stored with the round, so a finished match can be re-run from its log rather than taken on trust.

Horde terms

A walker: The ordinary one. Slow, takes a single shot, and there are always more of them than anything else.
A runner: Quick, still a single shot, and from the third wave on. What catches somebody who is walking backwards and shooting.
A brute: Slower than a walker and takes four shots. From the fourth wave on. The one to walk away from rather than stand and shoot.
A wave: A batch of the horde, on a clock that speeds up. Each is bigger than the last, and every fourth one is tougher as well.
Cover: One of the eight blocks. The horde walks around it and a shot will not go through it, so it is a corner to turn rather than a place to hide.
Down: Out of the round after three bites. You watch the rest of it, and how long you lasted is your place.
Standing: Still in the round. One survivor standing ends it, and that survivor takes it.
Dropped: A walker you shot until it was gone. It is the first thing that separates two survivors who both stood to the end.
A crate: A supply crate, every second wave, at an open point. Walking over it is a gun level, and it is gone whether you needed it or not.

Playing it here

Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from one minute to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.