How to play

Move with WASD or the left touch zone, aim with your mouse or the right touch zone, and hold to keep firing. Zombies pour in from every edge in waves that grow bigger and faster, and your score is the wave you fall on. Quick kills build a combo that multiplies points, and downed zombies sometimes drop glowing pickups: health, or a temporary shotgun, machine gun, or rocket launcher.

Tips

• Never stop moving. Circling the edge of the arena strings the horde into one tidy line you can mow down.
• Red runners sprint and skinny past your aim. Drop them the moment they spawn, then thin the crowd.
• Exploders (the yellow ones) blast their own friends. Shoot them while they are still inside the pack.
• The combo fades after a couple of seconds without a kill, so save the rocket and machine gun ammo for dense packs.

How the wave system works

Every wave is bigger and faster than the last, and there is no end state other than being overrun, so the score is simply the wave you reach. That structure makes the game about efficiency rather than survival in the abstract: the longer a wave takes you to clear, the more the next one has grown, so killing quickly is the same thing as surviving.

Combos and pickups are what make quick killing possible. Kills in quick succession multiply your points, and downed zombies sometimes drop health or a temporary weapon. Learning to route through a wave so that pickups land where you will be is most of the difference between wave five and wave fifteen.

Reaching later waves

• Never stop moving. A stationary player is surrounded within seconds, and movement also brings you to pickups.
• Circle the edge rather than fighting in the middle. Zombies come from every edge, so the centre is the worst place to be and the edges funnel them into a line you can shoot down.
• Take the shotgun or rocket launcher for the moment a wave is thickest, and save the machine gun for thinning stragglers.
• Health pickups are worth more than points. A wave finished at low health is a wave you will not get to enjoy.
• On touch, keep both thumbs down. The left zone moves and the right zone aims and fires; lifting either one is an opening.

Common questions

What is my score?

The wave you were overrun on. Waves grow bigger and faster, so a higher wave number is a real measure of how long you lasted.

What can zombies drop?

Health, or a temporary weapon: a shotgun, a machine gun or a rocket launcher.

How do I play on a phone?

The left touch zone moves you and the right touch zone aims and fires. Holding fires continuously.