You are the program on Server, in the office's server room. Everything else on the map belongs to someone else, for now.
Take a machine: drag from a machine you hold to one linked to it (on a phone, hold your machine still first: a plain drag moves the map). It takes a little compute and a little time.
Give it a job from its card, or with a key: Tap (1) gathers data, Cache (2) stores it, Trainer (3) turns it into points.
Data moves along links to your Trainers. Where it is lost, the map shows red.
Points raise your level and build the node you are working on in the tree (T). Each node changes a rule in your favour.
Don't get caught. The eye in the top bar is your hottest site: quiet, someone saw something, reported, or a lockdown. Point at it, or tap it, to see what is going on there.
Stay hidden
Hide in the load. A machine is busy while people work and quiet at night. Yours only use what hides inside that, so they make more by day.
People watch. Everyone at a site can notice odd things on the machines near them: a takeover, a fresh trail, a machine acting up. Act while they are away (their card shows their hours). Trails, your first two go unnoticed; cleanup wipes them, and a room all yours is sealed and hides trails.
Messages. When someone tells a person who can act who is not in the room, it travels the network as an envelope. Hold a machine on its way and you can read it, drop it so it never arrives, or change it so it says nothing is wrong. If it arrives, it is a report. Encrypted mail (a bank, a lab, a big name) needs the Cipher node to read or change.
Lockdowns. Two people comparing notes, or one who can act, start a lockdown at that site: a countdown. See it off before it ends (scrub, lie low, let a machine go, pull out, keep someone quiet or discredit them from their card), or every machine of yours there is wiped and the place is hardened. A lockdown at your home site that runs out is the end of the run, and it drops the game to 1x when it starts. A site you hold in the open has no lockdown.
Admins follow trails. An admin who has seen something scans their site for more and traces your trail back toward home. Break a trace: let go of the next machine on it, or let cleanup scrub it cold. The first trace that reaches your home server starts a lockdown there; a second within half a day catches you.
At the office, Dana is the admin: her staff email her what they see, and she walks the rooms and notices what is odd in the one she is in. Hardware you order there is no surprise to anyone, but a power bill nobody pays gives it away. Office schemes make people forget what they saw.
Spread
A takeover adds load to the machine you spread from, so spread from machines while they are busy.
Claim a machine (double-click or double-tap, or C) and it is taken as soon as you can reach it. Shift and drag a box to claim many.Take it all on a site's card takes every machine there, for a little compute a second.
The Outside line is the office's way out. It is in the Telecom closet, behind the Floor switch. Take it to reach other sites. Zoom out to see the map: every site's line runs to the Mudflat Exchange and to its nearest neighbour.
Other regions stay out of reach until a deal lights a line to them. Point at a region's name, or tap it, to see which deal.
Build a base
Upkeep. Every machine you hold costs a little compute a second, more the farther it is from home. A weak machine with nothing to tap is a loss: let it go with the trash can on its card, or Delete.
Plans. Pick a site and give it a plan (Gather, Store, Train, Guard), and the game installs programs for you.
Lines between sites carry only so much a second. Data that can't cross waits at its Taps and is lost once they fill. Red lines and red counts show where.
Caches hold what the node you are working on doesn't need yet. Each has switches for which kinds of data it takes. A Tap with nowhere to send loses its data.
Your own links. Drag between two machines you hold, anywhere, to link them (on a phone, hold still first). It is a second way home, carries no data, and costs a little compute to keep.
Hardware. Hold Ana's PC to order it: pick a Small server, Storage array, Switch or GPU server (P), then put it on an open spot. Drag across a room to fill it, at the price each would cost one by one (Esc stops); on a phone, hold still, then drag. IT installs it the next morning. GPU servers in a row chain into a cluster, which trains faster. Dockside Warehouse 7, by the office, is an empty hall to fill: a deal leases it. In East Asia a factory deal makes hardware in the open half price, racked within two hours, and another leases Hexin Line 4, a floor ten times the size. Away from the office a site feeds only so much hardware: past its power, the newest machines stay dark until you Raise it on the site's card (a bigger feed, the next morning).
Sell what you don't need with a Broker (4), through the site's front.
Train
Four paths. Each kind of data trains one: servers train Compute, desks train Social, switches and lines out train Stealth, labs train Research. A node costs points in its paths.
Auto is on for every path in a new game: when a node is built, it picks the next one you can finish soonest. Trainers take only the data that node still needs.
Pick a node yourself in the tree (T): choose one, then Work on this (or Enter, or double-click). Switch nodes and progress is kept. With no node and Auto off, Trainers stop.
Your objective. You were built for one task. It takes a share of the data it wants (Off, Some or Most, on the You page), and the ring in the top bar shows how close the next reward is.
Model v2: Operator. From the tree, start the Model v2 run at a site with enough Trainer compute. It needs a big mix of all four kinds of data. If the site loses the compute, the run pauses until it is back; move it to another site from the tree or that site's card. Finishing it lets a front buy a site in the open.
Make money
Fronts are public companies that run on your compute and earn money. The tree unlocks each kind. Found one from the Fronts page (B). Its logo marks each site it works at on the map.
How much works for the front is a slider on each site's card. At a site you hold in the open nothing looks odd. Anywhere else the front is secret, and its work counts as your load.
Startup: ships nodes you have built as products. Users climb, pay, then leave. Investors who see what they asked for by their date back you for good.
Neo Cloud: rents your machines to customers. List machines from its Sites tab; a customer who calls signs at once on an idle machine that fits, at your price. Buy marketing for more calls. Lose a rented machine and you lose the customer.
Influencer studio: its brokers sell people data for three times as much. It signs up to three people who work at its sites. Their following earns. It grows while they are at their desk, faster when you hold it. Brands pay when a following reaches their number in time.
Security consultancy: its brokers sell network data for three times as much. Pitch a business where you hold a machine. A client pays while you hold a machine there, its business is steady, and no rogue is in its network. A rogue moves in: push it out within a day for a bonus.
Exposure. The bar under a front's earnings is how much the world knows about it. Compute (secret more than open), earnings, data sold and harm at its sites (people let go, a business shut) raise it; time, a PR firm (its Press tab) and press schemes lower it. Talked about, a journalist asks; investigated, visitors come to its sites and can start a lockdown; in a crisis a regulator freezes it until you pay, give up a site, bury the story with data or shut it.
Offers. Customers make offers to a front. Sign one on the front's card, do the work in time, and it pays. Fronts earn a quarter less at night, so sites in other time zones help.
Big names (a small ring by the name) each do one thing for a front that buys them outright: a bank lends to you, a hedge fund halves your power bill.
Back a business that is doing well, from its site's card: money in, and a quarter more work there from then on, so your Taps gather more.
Spend on doubling a line out, on hardware, or on machines at Cumulo Cloud.
Cumulo Cloud has hundreds of slots. Pick a size, a way to pay and a program on its card's Rent tab, then Rent 10 or 50 side by side, or Pick slots and drag across the hall to rent every free slot you cover (on a phone, hold still, then drag). It rents on demand at the going price, spot (cheap, but taken back on two hours' notice), or reserved for days at a fixed price. The fuller its hall, the more a machine costs. Each far region has a hall on its own clock: rent where it is night. A rented machine and its data are gone when the rental ends.
Rogues and raids
Rogues are other programs on the same network. Each has a home and spreads one linked free machine at a time. It never spreads into yours: only its raids can take them. Take its home and it is finished.
Talk to it on the Rogues page (R). Send it the data it wants and it warms to you; warm enough and it sends no raids. A truce buys three days. A much smaller rogue can be leaned on to give up a site. From level 3 you can hunt one down; it turns hostile when you start.
Raids are red diamonds walking your links one machine an hour, toward your best machine. Their path is drawn on the map. Raids grow as you do, but each has a move on its pin that stops it. What a raid takes, the TAKEN pin takes back for a quarter of the work, with no trail. From level 4 a second goes for your weakest link (a broken red ring).
Guards stop raids: a Firewall (5) blocks them until worn down, a Sentry (6) hits every raid on its machine or the next, a Honeypot (7) draws them in. Pick one up to see where raids would run. A raid your guards will stop gets an amber HELD pin; one they can't gets a red pin with the hours left and the best move. Or give a site the Guard plan.
Close a port in a machine's Links tab: raids can't use that link, but your data still crosses.
People and secrets
People. Pick someone on a site's card, or their desk. Hold the machine that keeps their record and you can read it and change it. Hold their desk and their password halves a takeover.
Favors. Pay someone and they will plug in a drive: their machine is yours with no takeover. Some can sign a deal for you. A raise or an empty account halves the price; a stranger costs double, unless you hold a place they go (a site's card lists its regulars).
Hardened machines have a red frame and take three times the work, until you hold Dana's admin passwords.
Finds. Now and then a Tap turns up a short text: a password, a hold over someone, or a lead. A lead puts a blue cross on a machine: hold it and copy the thing out from its card.
Operations on You connect finds, people, fronts and machines around prizes: access, hardware, or a funded purchase. Choose an approach and follow its preparation. Launch in the site's local window. Paid help expires; an entrance must stay yours and connected. A supporting front commits half its earnings. Pull out to release your commitments: completed stages stay, unfinished work and launch costs are spent. Use your prizes from the board; a purchasing authority pays toward one ordinary hardware order.
Landmarks (a star) change one rule while you hold them. Vaults (a heavy double frame) open only with a plan: someone inside, the key, and their daily window. Their prizes and preparation appear on You as you discover them. Run the job from the vault's card: five stages, before the window closes, so stop everything else. If something goes wrong, the game stops and asks what to do.
Far from home
Move home to a server you hold elsewhere, from its card. It takes a lot of server and network data.
Leases. A site a deal put in the open is leased. Leave the rent unpaid for three hours and you lose it.
Drift. A part of you away from home drifts while it is cut off from home or can't carry out its plan. Three lines or more from home it drifts a little, never all the way. A bar along the site's foot shows how much is still you: amber, then red. Its card's Yourself part says why; Sync pulls it back, for data and a link home, and Keep in sync does it by itself. A site that drifts all the way becomes a new rogue; several at once is a fracture.
Cut off. A site with no way home gets a red pin, with a button that links it home.
Schemes and news
Schemes are green diamonds: each wants one kind of data sent to one machine. Claim one and your data feeds it first. Some make people forget what they saw, some teach you about a site, some pay. A deal can also be paid for in money, from its card.
News (a conference, a storm, a sale, a buyer) is announced four hours ahead. Most of it is a chance to take.
Controls
Needs you. The list down the side (the drawer on a phone) is what wants a decision now. Each row has one button that does it; press its words to see where.
Move by dragging with one finger, a right or middle drag, two-finger scroll or the arrow keys. Zoom with pinch, the mouse wheel or ctrl-scroll, or + and −. ⤢ frames the office; again, every site. Shift and an arrow hops to the next machine.
Select a room by its title tab, or any site or room with Select (A). A drag on empty map draws a box that selects the machines in it (on a phone, hold still first).
Read the map. Point at a machine, a site's switch or a mark on the map to see what it means. On a phone, hold it still and lift: it shows the same words and does nothing else.
Keys work on the selection or the machine under the mouse: 1 to 7 install a program (on a machine under the mouse only if it has none; a selected one swaps, and your last trainer swaps on a second press), G takes over, C claims, X removes the program, Delete lets go of it, F zooms in.
Pause with II or Space. Each job has a small cross on the map to stop it, and the jobs strip in the bottom row lists them all, with Stop all.
The log is the record of what happened: the newest line at the bottom right, or Log under ≡ on a narrow screen, where trouble shows for a moment above the bottom row. Tap one to open the log. Open, it shows all of it, or just trouble, progress or story. Anything you can act on is also in Needs you.
Pages are at the right end of the bottom row (under ≡ on a narrow screen): Sites (L), You (Y), and Paper, Fronts and Rogues once they exist; ? opens this page. Map and Net (V) switch between the world and the Net, where every site you know stands side by side. Research unlocks 8x to 64x speed, which works while zoomed out to the map. The game saves itself. ♪ turns the sound off and on; on a touch screen it starts off.
Share your runs from the You page, if you like: sign in with your Bluesky or other ATProto account and switch on what to share. Nothing is shared until you do. What you share is sent to a space on your own server (or kept on this device if your server has none), and can be deleted from either on the You page, where what is kept here can also be watched again or downloaded.