Tidefall // Manual

Tidefall is a session-based extraction-survival game viewed top-down in pixel art. Each "raid" drops your Operator into a freshly generated underground sector swarming with creatures. There is no respawn and no checkpoint inside a raid: the only way to keep what you find is to physically reach an open extraction point and hold it.

It fuses two loops:

• The Tarkov loop — high-stakes raids where your loot is only yours once you extract. Get killed (by a creature OR another player) and your entire raid pack is gone.
• The Don't Starve loop — a persistent Living Island base you decorate and develop. Producers passively generate resources (even offline), stations unlock crafting, and buffs strengthen your next dive.

The persistent layer is wired to a Solana wallet. Your account holds a USDC balance; the in-game Market is the single channel that converts salvaged loot into real spendable USDC. Every item carries a base value in USDC, which also drives its rarity tier.

The game cycles through five stages. Master the rhythm and the risk curve becomes readable.

Your Operator is defined by three attributes. Each one feeds a single derived combat stat through a fixed formula:

Base attack damage before the multiplier is 12. So an Operator with 10 STR hits for 12 × (1 + 0.05×10) = 18 per swing. Base HP with 0 VIT is 100; base speed with 0 AGI is 60 px/s.

XP & Leveling

The XP threshold to advance scales quadratically: xp_to_next = level² × 100. Reaching level 2 needs 100 XP banked at level 1 (1²×100); level 3 needs 400; level 10 needs 8,100; and so on up to the cap of level 100.

Stat Points & Allocation

• You start with 5 unspent stat points.
• Each level-up grants +3 points.
• Points are spent in the Base screen (the OPERATOR // HOME CAMP panel) — one click adds one point to STR, VIT, or AGI. You cannot spend more points than you hold.

When you deploy you choose an insertion zone. Two biomes exist today, each with its own enemy roster, loot tier, and difficulty rating:

Higher difficulty raises both the danger and the reward: it adds extra enemies (+6 per difficulty level) and a richer loot tier. The Cemetery is the high-risk / high-reward dive.

The Procedural Cave

Every raid generates a fresh dungeon from a random seed — layout is never the same twice. The world is a huge 7680 × 5400 px space partitioned into a 12 × 9 room grid = 108 rooms. A randomized DFS spanning tree links the rooms with 3-tile-wide L-shaped (90°) corridors, plus ~22% extra edges that add loops so you're never funneled. The backend is authoritative: it generates the floor mask and ships it to your client, so collision and rendering can never drift apart.

• Spawn — you start in the central room. Enemies populate every other room (any room more than 340 px from spawn).
• Enemy density — roughly 1.2 creatures per room (≈130 on the 108-room grid), plus +6 × difficulty, hard-capped at 150 per cave.

Enemies & AI

Each creature uses the same simple, readable AI: it locks onto the nearest living player. If that target is within its aggro range it gives chase; once inside its attack range (30 px) it swings on its own cooldown. Outside aggro range it idles. They never path through walls — they respect the same floor mask you do.

Cave roster

Cemetery roster

Player Combat

Your swing is an instant radial hit: every enemy (and every other player) within 48 px takes your full damage at once, then a 0.45 s cooldown gates the next swing. Damage equals 12 × your STR multiplier. Killing a creature awards its XP and rolls its loot table into your raid pack.

The 15-Minute Clock & Collapse

Every raid runs on a hard 900-second (15:00) timer. When it hits zero the cave collapses: any player still "active" (not yet extracted) is instantly killed and their pack is lost. The HUD clock turns amber at 90 s left and flashes red "EXTRACT NOW" in the final 30 s. There is no overtime — the clock is the real boss.

Six fixed extraction points are spread across the cave: the four corner rooms, plus top-middle and bottom-middle. Each has a 44 px radius. They are not always usable — they cycle OPEN and CLOSED on a deterministic clock.

The Extract Channel

• Stand inside an open point. A progress bar fills over 3 seconds.
• Progress only advances while the point is currently open and you are inside its radius.
• Leave the zone and progress decays at 1.5× — about 2 s to fully drain a full channel. Don't step out early.
• At 100% you are EXTRACTED: your pack + XP commit instantly and you're out, even if others keep playing.

The Sector Map minimap (top-right of the HUD) plots every point as a diamond — teal when open with a glow ring, dim when closed — each labeled with a countdown to its next state change and a directional tag (NW, N, NE, W, E, SW, S, SE) relative to world center. The minimap shows only YOU, never enemies or rival players (an intentional info-leak rule).

A cave instance is shared. Multiple operators can occupy the same dungeon, and there are no teams — every player can damage and kill every other player.

Matchmaking

When you deploy, the system first looks for a session that is still active, under the join window, below the player cap, and on your chosen biome. If one exists, you join it; otherwise a brand-new session is created with you as the founder. After the 120 s window closes, a session is locked — no late arrivals.

Spread Spawns

To prevent telefragging, new arrivals don't spawn on top of you. The spawn picker chooses the candidate room that maximizes the minimum distance to every player already in the cave. You always get breathing room.

Loot-Steal & Bounty XP

• Your attack hits rival players in the same 48 px radius as creatures — there is no off switch for friendly fire.
• Land the killing blow and you steal the victim's entire raid pack — every item they were carrying is merged into yours.
• The kill also pays a flat +50 bounty XP on top of the dead player's dropped loot.
• The victim is eliminated on the spot — their pack is zeroed, so nobody else can grab it.

Per-Player Island Buffs

Buffs are personal. Each operator carries their own island's Rested (max-HP) and XP multipliers into the shared raid — your neighbor's lavish base does not buff you, and finalize multiplies XP per-player. Multiplayer-safe by construction.

When you kill a creature, its loot table is rolled — each row is an independent chance to drop a random quantity. Loot drops straight into your raid pack (the session inventory shown bottom-left on the HUD). Tougher, high-tier enemies roll richer tables.

Rarity Tiers

Rarity is derived directly from an item's base USDC value — no separate roll. The same thresholds drive the Stash colors and the Market sort order:

The Gem (1.00 USDC) is the chase drop — a legendary that only the high loot tables roll, and only rarely (2%–12%). A single secured Gem can be worth more than an entire pack of common ore.

The Stash (STASH // SALVAGE on your base screen) is your persistent inventory. Unlike the raid pack, it is durable — items here are never lost to death. Extracted loot, crafted goods, island production, and market purchases all live in the Stash.

• Each entry shows quantity, name, category, per-unit USDC value, and a rarity-colored tile.
• The frame header shows your total Stash value (Σ quantity × unit value) in USDC.
• Items sort by rarity (legendary → common), then value, then name.
• Most resources stack to 999; consumables to 99; weapons are unique (stack 1).

The Stash is also the source of truth for everything else: crafting pulls inputs from it, building/placing consumes from it, expansion spends Gold from it, and the Market sells out of it.

Your island is a tile grid you decorate by placing crafted objects. Most are cosmetic, but four roles carry mechanical effects (defined per object type). Placing an object consumes one of that crafted item from your Stash; removing it returns the item (the craft cost is only paid once).

Passive Production & Offline Accrual

• Producers generate continuously. Yield = per_hour × hours since last collected, floored to whole units. It accrues even while you're logged out.
• Each item is independently capped at BASE_CAP 100 + Σ storage caps. With no storage, production stops accumulating once any item hits 100.
• Hit COLLECT to sweep all pending production into your Stash; this resets the timer to now.
• First-ever collect is not retroactive — it just starts the clock (no instant windfall from before you had producers).

Raid Buffs

Buffs stack from every matching object up to a hard +50% ceiling each. Rested raises your starting/max HP for the raid (a fully Rested operator with 0 VIT enters with 150 HP); XP multiplies committed XP on extract. The Deployment Terminal shows your active buffs before you dive.

Expansion

• The island starts at 16 × 12 tiles (level 0).
• Each EXPAND adds +4 × 4 to the dimensions (more placement capacity) and increments the level.
• Cost is paid in Gold: 50 × (level + 1) — so 50, then 100, then 150, and so on. This is the main Gold sink.

Crafting turns raw salvage into planks, ingots, potions, weapons, and the placeable objects that make your island work. A recipe that lists a station requires that station present in your base — either as a built Building or as a station-role placeable on your island. Stationless recipes (most decoration) only need the base itself.

Plus ~90 decorative placeables (trees, rocks, fences, barrels, paths, statues…) crafted from wood / stone / herb / plank — each doubling as a producer, storage, station, or buff when its type carries a role.

Station build costs (as Buildings)

Removing a Building refunds half its cost. Crafting is instant (time_sec = 0 for all current recipes).

The Market is the single channel that turns salvage into spendable USDC and back into supplies. It runs on a fixed spread so buy is always pricier than sell, which kills arbitrage.

So a Gem (base 1.00) sells for 0.85 USDC; Iron Ore (base 0.05) sells for 0.04. Buying is restricted to the supplies catalog (raw resources + consumables) — you can never buy weapons, legendary loot, or placeables; those must be looted or crafted. All money is handled in cents (rounded half-up), each trade committed atomically.

Sources & Sinks

Controls

Movement intent is sent at a fixed rate; the server is authoritative and simulates at 15 Hz, so your client interpolates between snapshots. You only control your operator while your status is "active."

HUD Reference

• Plan your exit before you loot. Note which 3 points are open and where the next ones flip. The map countdowns tell you the future — read them.
• The clock is the real killer. Most failed raids aren't deaths — they're a full pack lost at 0:00. Start heading for an exit with a comfortable margin.
• Don't over-extend the channel. Stepping out at 90% drains fast (1.5×). Commit to the full 3 s once you start.
• VIT survives, STR farms, AGI escapes. Early VIT keeps you alive to learn; AGI lets you outrun zombies (most are slower than 60 px/s) and reach exits.
• Respect ranged & casters. Long Fungus (180 aggro) and Banshee (220 aggro) pull from far — close the gap or break line of sight.
• Other operators are the biggest threat AND prize. A kill hands you their entire pack + 50 XP. But you still have to carry it out.
• Build producers + storage first. Passive yield with a high cap means you log in to a full Stash. Add a Fountain (Rested) and a Rune Tablet (XP) before hard dives.
• Mind the spread. Sell at 0.85×, buy at 1.15× — don't churn the same item; only buy supplies you can't loot efficiently.