Shelf Stable

Helix Dynamics Product Recall
Certain lots labeled Shelf Stable were not. Do not open the container. Board the first-story windows. Thank you for your loyalty during this routine product-quality event.
— Field Containment Division / Checkpoint Voss

The job

Horde-scale tower defense. You are a Field Containment Operator at Checkpoint Voss, the last forward ops campus still running.

Place hardpoints on a surveyed site, aim their firing cones, and hold the line while a biomass tide walks into it. Every host is a real body in a GPU physics simulation — they push each other, pile against the ones in front, wedge into the nooks of corridors, and pour through the second they get a chance. Density will be the problem. Firepower will be your solution.

Survey 1 is not a first-try clear. Lose, take the Gold anyway, file it into the Weapons Program, and come back with better hardware.

What ships in the base build

• 14 surveyed sites — a hand-authored campaign at Checkpoint Voss. Hold one without a single leak and it pays a Token.
  
• The Weapons Program — 129 research seats that stick between attempts. Failed runs still pay. Spend Gold and Tokens down the path you see most fit.
  
• Hardpoints — SMG up through LMG and MMG, Launcher, Cannon, Payload Artillery, and Carriers. Plus a Control Tower that unlocks specialist placeables — Crushers, Incinerators, Acid Pits, Shock Traps and Chillers — and, further down the artillery line, a Containment Well that folds the tide in on itself.
  
• Containment editor — author your own sites. Paint the path, place the mouths, TEST it, keep it in your local archive.
  
• Steam Workshop — publish your sites, and subscribe to other operators' beside your own.
  
• Monthly Containment Protocol — one official site per month. Locked kit, locked wave table, no career research carried in. Score is rounds held and infected culled.

Built in Godot. The horde runs entirely on GPU compute — a Vulkan-capable GPU with compute support is required, and there is no CPU fallback.