Every entry so far has had one person in the city. The Fighting entry said other survivors were off the table until the zombie fight felt right. This week they came on to the table, in two pieces, talking and fighting, and the order I did them in matters.
Talking, from a list
There is no chat box. Tap yourself and a Talk line opens a short list of things to say, grouped by what you mean: greet, warn, ask for help, offer a trade. “Anyone there?” “I’m friendly.” “Back off!”
Two reasons. The first is the phone: typing with your thumbs while something walks at you is how you die typing. The second is the other players. A free text box is a slur box the moment a stranger finds it, and I would rather have a game where nobody can say anything ugly than a game where I moderate it. A list of phrases is the smallest language that still lets two people who’ve never met agree not to kill each other.
A phrase is a sound your character makes, and it obeys every rule the Hearing entries laid out. You pick a volume. Whatever the volume, anyone who can see you reads the words in a bubble over your head. A whisper carries only a short way past that, and no zombie hears it. A yell carries well past the block to other survivors, and pulls in the zombies nearer by. Anyone who can only hear you gets what they’d get from any other sound: that someone said something, roughly there. So “Back off!” is a real thing to yell at someone who’s too close. The right move, most of the time, is the whisper, which keeps the words between people who can see each other.
Fighting each other
The day after talk went in, I opened the other door. You can attack another survivor. Tap them and the same sheet you get for a zombie comes up, with the same line on it: attack, with what you’re holding, what it costs, how loud it is. Melee up close, a gun at range, through a window if you’re peeking. Nothing changes because the target is a person. If you kill them, they drop where they stood with their gear on the body, and it does not count as a zombie kill.
There are no safe zones. A safe zone is a place where the rules stop, and every rule in this game is about the same thing: what you do makes noise, and noise has consequences. Attacking a survivor in the open happens in front of witnesses, and with a gun the whole block hears it, next to a body that will stand up and come after you wearing your victim’s coat.
While you’re away
The Fighting entry made one promise: your character never fights by reflex. This week I broke it, once, on purpose. A survivor left in the city is now allowed to hit back. Not to start anything, not to chase anyone. Only to answer whoever just attacked it, or a threat right on top of it, with whatever it’s holding, at about half the pace a live player would manage.
Without this, the best way to get gear is to find a survivor whose player is asleep and take it, and no rule about noise touches a sleeper. A body that answers back, even badly, makes that a fight instead of a harvest. It’s still the worst fight you can be in, and being awake still wins.
You set one thing about it in advance: whether your body fires a gun. Conserve, only when the shot can land. Silent, never. Free-fire, whenever it can. That setting belongs to you, not the survivor, so it survives death and follows your next one.
The first time a player is killed by another player, I’ll find out what this game is. If the victim logs back in, reads the event log, sees the name, and goes looking, I have the game I wanted: a small city where people remember. If they close the tab and don’t come back, I’ve built a place where the worst thing that can happen to you is another person.