0.4.0 — Shoot What You Can See
The tablet you already carry now has a camera. Point it at the dark and you get a photograph — and that photograph opens a page in a reference book that starts out almost empty. The bestiary and the encyclopedia are not handed to you. You take them, picture by picture, off the things that are hunting you.
The camera
Press C and the tablet comes up as a viewfinder.
- Zoom with the wheel. Frame a creature across the hall before it notices the noise that lit it.
- R for a selfie — your own character in frame, with whatever is behind you.
- Right-click to record video: up to 15 seconds, with sound — the world as you heard it from where you stood, plus your own voice when your channel was open. The recorder beeps and lights a small wave while it runs, so filming is never free.
- Your gear is not swapped to hold it. Raising the camera does not cost you the wrench in your hand.
You can only photograph what the sound lit
- A picture is judged by the light actually in the frame — the same light the waves make, because it is the only light this world has. A creature standing in silence and darkness does not come out at all.
- So a photograph is a decision, not a button. Something has to make noise: a shout, a thrown crate, your own running footsteps, the creature's own roar. To take the shot you have to be found.
- Everything you shoot lands in the GALLERY, and you can send it to the crew.
The bestiary
- Photograph a creature and its entry opens — with your own shot as the cover of that page. No species is listed in advance; the book is the record of what your crew has actually seen and lived through.
- An entry waits for the screen after the contract instead of popping up mid-run. Nothing on the floor is ever spoiled by the book telling you what is already behind you.
- Still empty pages are the honest answer to "what else is down here" — you find out by going down and surviving long enough to raise the tablet.
The encyclopedia
- The same thing for the world rather than its inhabitants: locations, locks, machines, cargo and the company itself, each unlocked by the shot you took of it.
- Company pages are open from the start. Everything from the floors below opens when you get there and get a picture of it.
- The whole reference book is yours across every save — it survives new campaigns and liquidations. What you have photographed, you keep.
And a contract built for the camera
- The shift order can now ask for a selfie with a named species and then a video of that species being killed. Deeper runs ask for two species at once.
- The kill is judged by what the lens was really pointed at in the world — you have to stand there and witness it, not wave the tablet at the ceiling and hope.
- If the target dies off camera, the species is a resident of the floor again and comes back the way everything comes back: on noise.
The tablet also became a phone
- Messages to one person or the whole crew, photos attached. The recipient's tablet RINGS — and the ring is a real wave the creatures hear, so switch it to VIBRATE before the floor gets bad.
- Profiles with an avatar, campaign stats and the shots you published; the crew can like and comment on them.
- Press P for the full menu: camera, gallery, messages, profiles, bestiary, encyclopedia, settings.
Also in this update
- The defibrillator kills. Any creature, a turret, or a living teammate — twice as fast as it revives, and the device is spent. Arcs, sparks and a second of current over the body.
- Last chance kit. Once per campaign, when the run is effectively over — one permit, nothing to sell, no gear, an empty bank — an orange crate rolls out of the supply van with a radio, beacon, sonar and wrench for everyone. The lift waits until you open it.
- Campaign epilogue now lists the crew with their campaign stats — objectives, cargo, kills, rescues, deaths — and a speaker icon while someone is talking.
- Twice the waves and twice the audio voices (64 each). In a warehouse full of zombies the pulse from a thrown item used to blink out instantly and the floor's rage roar was cut off by a footstep across the level. Both pools now give up the least useful thing instead of the oldest.
- The tracker beacon chirps on left-click while held — and the creatures hear every chirp.
Go get a picture of something awful. Preferably from behind.
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