How it plays · the rules page
The loop, without the marketing.
This is the mechanics of NETGODZ, in full, for people who want the arithmetic before the atmosphere. You don't need any of it to enjoy the world.
A raid is one target. A run is the chain of raids until you die or retire, and the run total is your score. Integrity and credits carry from raid to raid. Unlocks do not: every run starts you back at the cheapest Probe there is.
Step one
Read the target.
Before anything else you get three numbers about the site you are about to run: a source multiplier, the odds of the cache holding something high-value, and the odds of it holding a gem. A 4×/35% target pays roughly five times what a 1×/8% target pays for exactly the same work and exactly the same risk.
Reading those three numbers and deciding the raid is not worth taking is a legitimate move, and often the correct one.
Step two
Fit the deck. This part is free.
No clock, no trace, nothing shooting. You click warez off the rack and they load into the memory bus. A Mark I deck gives you 6 memory and 1 core.
| Warez | Mem | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Probe | 1 | Names the layer you are looking at. Better versions read more of it. |
| Crowbar | 2 | Breaks Barrier. 2d6+2, a fast 3.5-second cycle. |
| Solvent | 3 | Breaks Ward. 2d8+2. |
| Spike | 3 | Breaks Sentry. 1d12+3, so it swings. |
| Mask | 1 | Scrubs a percentage of your trace back off. |
| Siphon | 3 | Mines the cache. Holds a core the whole time it runs. |
| Patch | 2 | Restores integrity. Once per run. Burning it frees its memory. |
Add it up. A breaker for each of the three ICE types plus the Siphon is eleven memory, and a Mark I has six. So every raid starts with choosing which ICE you will have no answer for.
Memory is the whole decision, so it is also the design constraint. Later ICE behaves in new ways, but it never needs a fourth breaker. A new counter would remove a puzzle, and on a Mark I you could not carry it anyway.
Step three
Engage, and know what each layer is costing you.
At 31 trace, each thing you do has a 31% chance of being the one that gets you seen.
The clock starts and the trace starts climbing. You click a layer of ICE, or the cache bar, to target it, then fire a warez at it. Attacks roll d20+6 against the layer's defence, then roll damage. Fire the wrong tool at a layer and you take −8 to hit and half damage; miss badly enough and the layer seals, which costs you more trace.
Break order is most of the tactics, and it depends on what each layer takes from you more than on how hard it is to kill.
| Layer | Def / HP | Takes | What that means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barrier | 11 / 10 | Extraction | Never shoots at you. No income at all until it falls. Only Barriers stop the Siphon. |
| Ward | 13 / 14 | The Siphon | Heavy hits, and each one that lands can knock your mining offline again. |
| Sentry | 12 / 12 | Trace | Light damage, but +4 trace per hit. It does not kill you, it shortens the run. |
A layer never names itself by fighting you. Only a Probe names one, or breaking it. Until then you read the effect: two integrity and a jump in trace is a Sentry; five integrity and your mining dropping is a Ward. An unidentified layer shows you the raw die and nothing else, because showing you its defence would identify it by arithmetic.
Step four
Mine, and notice what mining costs.
The Siphon aims itself at the cache, holds its core, and pulls until you disconnect, eject it, a Ward disrupts it, a Barrier comes up, or the cache runs dry.
On a one-core Mark I that matters: while the Siphon is holding the core, you cannot answer the ICE at all. You start extracting while things are still shooting, and you stay committed until you stop.
If the target has a gem, it is buried somewhere between 35% and 90% deep in the cache. You have to push to reach it, and pushing is also how runs end.
The main rule
Trace is your odds, not your timer.
Nothing shoots at you until you are discovered. Every probe, every attack, every tick of the Siphon rolls against your current trace as the chance of being spotted. At 20 trace, each action carries a 20% chance of being the one that gives you away. At 60 it is a coin flip you keep taking.
Trace does not fill on a schedule. It goes up when you do things, so the way to keep it low is to do fewer, better-chosen things. Get through an entire raid without ever being discovered and the debrief pays you a GHOSTED bonus on top of the haul.
Step five
Three endings, and only one of them is a win.
- Disconnect
You bank everything you are holding and the deck comes home intact. This is the only good ending, and it is available at any moment of the raid.
- Traced
Trace reaches the cap. The cargo is gone and the run is over.
- Deck failed
Integrity reaches zero. The cargo is gone and the run is over.
Filling your storage does not end the raid for you. It stops extraction and tells you to disconnect. Leaving is always your decision.
Step six
The debrief, and the chain.
Between raids you spend: repairs at five credits per point of integrity, a refit for a spent Patch, better versions of your warez from the market, or the next deck up. Marks II, III, IV and V unlock as the chain gets deeper and cost 400, 1,200, 2,800 and 6,000 credits.
All of it comes out of the run total, and the run total is also your score. Every credit you spend staying alive comes off it.
Then you take the next target, or you retire and bank the run. Targets escalate on both sides as you go deeper: more layers and faster reinforcements, but bigger caches and richer sources.
Mission types
Most raids are theft. A few are not.
Across a full campaign of twenty-eight targets, twenty-two are ordinary extractions. The other six are set pieces, and they exist to break the habits the extractions taught you.
Extract
Take the cache and leave. The pressure is greed against the clock, and it pays from the haul.
Inject
Get in and stay while the payload writes. Leaving early pays nothing at all, so trace becomes something you sit and absorb.
Disrupt
You have to clear every layer in the stack. Pays double bounties, plus a bonus for levelling it.
Inject inverts the core tension. Every other raid rewards leaving and this one punishes it, because a half-written payload pays nothing.
In the hand
It is a phone game, and it is built like one.
NETGODZ is coming to iOS and Android. Tap a layer or the cache bar to aim, tap a warez to fire it, and hold one to eject it and free its memory, which is also how you stop a Siphon that is sitting on your only core. Everything in a raid can be reached with one thumb.
Every mechanic stays fully legible in the teletype era, because the teletype era is the compatibility floor and no information is ever allowed to exist only in a later era's art. A screen that can draw dashes can draw the entire game.
There is no account and no shop inside the game, and nothing in it sells anything. The full game is in development and has no date.