Shift Orders, Slippery Floors & the Metro PA System

Echo Mates Playtest · published · build 25431666

The job board is gone. From now on, the company hands you ONE order per shift, and you'll have to deal with whatever's on it.

Shift orders

  • Instead of picking a job from three, every shift comes with a random mixed order: 2–3 required tasks plus 1–2 optional ones that pay extra.
  • Tasks can be anything the floor has to offer: recovering bodies, gas cylinders, power cells, Brooder eggs, cryo barrels, cryo and sample flasks, or an echo survey with the Sonar.
  • A new order is rolled after every run, so no two shifts play the same.
  • Your grade (F to A+) now depends on closing the order and on how many optional tasks you pulled off.
  • Contract prices are no longer shown in advance. You find out what you earned on the payout screen.

Slippery floors

  • Leaky pipes on the ceiling drip into puddles below. Look for the ripple of the drip in the dark.
  • Walking through a puddle is safe. Running through one can make you slip and fall.
  • If you fall, you drop whatever you were carrying, and fragile loot can break.
  • Acid and cryo spills are slippery too.

Metro: public address system

  • Every Metro floor now has a dispatch room, locked behind a tone lock. Sing the right note to get in.
  • Inside is a PA console. Talk into it and your voice comes out of every loudspeaker on the floor.
  • That makes it a great decoy, a way to lure creatures away, or a way to find your lost teammates. It also makes the whole floor very aware of you, very fast.

Loot carts

  • Cargo in a cart now takes hits. Crash into a wall, get hit by a kick or a blast, and fragile things can break or lose value, while explosive cargo may go off. The soundproof cart softens the blows a little.
  • Sprint into a teammate with a cart and you'll knock them flat.

Other changes

  • The room you step into from the lift is much smaller now, and sometimes the lift opens straight onto a corridor junction instead of a hall.
  • The on-floor tablet is cleaner: the map is back to full size, and tasks are listed by the same names you see when you look at the item.
  • The first time you slip, a one-time card explains: don't run on wet floors.

Thanks for testing, and watch your step.