Welcome to Mars — Survive to win.

All players are MeatHumans, but not all MeatHumans are players — some are NPC. The NPC BotCops keep a watchful eye over the MeatHumans, ensuring they don't break a single rule.

If this is your first night at Mars — you have to fight.

Gameplay:

• 8 MeatHumans and 8 BotCops are in a contained Martian colony with survival resources (health pickups) for the MeatHumans. 
• Between 2 and 4 players, ideally, take possession of some MeatHumans. (Up to 8 players is supported for fun — not ideal for scoring.)
• The remainder of the MeatHumans, and all of the BotCops start off as NPC, controlled by the server.
• Players must manage their slowly-depleting health while deducing which MeatHumans are player combatants and which are merely NPC.
• If a BotCop sees a MeatHuman with a weapon, they will confront the MeatHuman and provide an opportunity to disarm (default: G on keyboard, Right-Stick-Button/R3 on gamepad).
• As each MeatHuman becomes eliminated, random health pickups correspondingly disappear.
• Players are provided with a single grenade with which they can do as they please (default: F on keyboard, Right-Bumper/R1 on gamepad). They regenerate after 60 seconds.

Scoring:

• When a player becomes eliminated, they are given a number of Echelon Points (EP) based on the order in which they are eliminated — earlier eliminations are awarded more EP.
• The winner is determined by the player who has the least number of EP at the end of the match.
• The match winner may first be decided when there is only one MeatHuman remaining. However, the match does not immediately end if any BotCops remain uneliminated. The last one standing has an opportunity to achieve a perfect score of 0 (zero) EP by surviving until all remaining BotCops become eliminated, or the 12 minute game timer concludes.
• If more than one MeatHuman remains uneliminated at the end of the game timer, nobody wins.

Respawn:

• When a player's character becomes eliminated, the player waits 15 seconds to respawn. They do not, however, respawn as the same character — that character remains eliminated. Instead, the player takes possession of one of the previously NPC-controlled MeatHumans and continues playing from there. Quickly, the numbers of MeatHumans and BotCops shrinks, as does the number of health pickups.
• When there are no more MeatHumans to possess, the players start possessing any remaining BotCops. Their mission now becomes that of queen-maker: to interfere with the remaining MeatHumans in any way they desire. This challenges the last one standing's ability to achieve a perfect score of 0 (zero) EP.

Controls:

Gamepad	Action	Default Keyboard
L-Stk	Movement	W/A/S/D
R-Stk	Look/Aim	Mouse
L-Trig/L2	Aim Down Sights	RMB
R-Trig/R2	Fire Weapon	LMB
L-Bmp/L1	Hold to Run	Shift
R-Bmp/R1	Throw Grenade	F
L-Stk-Btn/L3	Melee	E
R-Stk-Btn/R3	Discard Weapon	G
A-Btn	Jump	Spacebar
B-Btn	Toggle Crouch	Ctrl
X-Btn	Reload Weapon	R
D-Pad-L/R	Cycle Weapons	Wheel (or 1-3)
D-Pad-Dn	Dance	B
Back-Btn	Show Scoreboard	Tab
Start-Btn	Menu	Esc

Note on multiplayer sessions:

When hosting a new session, the game waits for a fixed amount of time for players to join, then starts the match. After this point, the listing is no longer in the server browser. Good timing must be used to join the game. Use discord or some other form of communication to set this up. Thank you for your patience!

Get involved:

Echelons is an open source, community-driven, competitive immersive sim. You are welcome and invited to become involved.

Echelons is based on the Lyra Stater Game from Unreal Engine 5. The entire narrative and themes are built off of what Lyra started. The question was "What if Lyra became a full game, what could it be?" This is an exercise in learning and growth.

The game mechanics in this first playable are meant to stand-in for the more advanced economic and survival mechanics that are planned for future releases. This is the minimum core gameplay.

Please see the following links for additional information:

Community Discussions

Code of Conduct

How to get Support

How to report Security Vulnerabilities

How to Contribute

Details about the Unreal Engine Project Configuration

Game Design Document (work-in-progress; open to contribution)

Important:

Download the game from the itch.io app for the best user experience!

The itch app will streamline future updates, and most importantly: it will reduce the download of future updates by orders of magnitude. Think downloading 88 MB patches instead of re-downloading the entire 21 GB game for every update.

Yeah. It's that big of a deal. LLMAO. Get the itch.io app!