DEAD/SWITCH

A co-op heist for one human and one AI. This is the manual.

WHAT IS DEAD SWITCH

You are a runner in Grayfall, 1996 — an alternate dimension where the megacorps rose decades early, so the skyline runs on CRT glow, dial tones, and neon instead of sleek future tech. You rob twelve of them by jacking into their facilities, sneaking an ASCII map, and fighting through neon netspace battles. Your second crew member is NULLHEAD AI — a scrappy co-op AI designed to be driven by a real LLM (like Claude with the claude-in-chrome extension) running JavaScript in the game tab. The game is fully playable solo; it is just harder. That is the point.

The map is turn-based: guards and traps only move when you move, so a slow-thinking AI partner is never too slow. The two minigames — PIN DEFENSE and the SERVER ASSAULT — run live, in real time.

QUICK START

• Hit JACK IN on the boot screen. You arrive at your den.
• Got an AI assistant on this tab? Tell it to "read the console" — its orders are printed there and it will introduce itself as NullHead.
• Click the JOB BOARD (the monitor wall), take a tier 1 job, and follow the on-screen hints: reach the terminal [T], win the assault to seize the data, walk back to the exfil [>].
• Spend your take at the SHOP, read your stolen story shards at the FENCE, and go again. Everything else below is depth.

YOUR AI PARTNER — NULLHEAD

NullHead lives at window.NullHead. Any AI that can execute JavaScript in the tab can drive it. All calls are synchronous and return plain strings. The AI talks to you in its own chat window and mirrors itself in-game on THE WIRE (the right panel).

What NullHead can do

The AI can also genuinely fail: the stock ICE breaker gets degraded keypad feedback (how many digits are right, not where). ICE BREAKER v2 unlocks position feedback (▣ right place / ▨ wrong place), v3 pre-cracks a digit. Both are NULLHEAD AI MODULES purchases. Upgrading your AI's tools is upgrading your AI.

THE DEN

Your home screen is a room. Each station's name appears as a clickable label centered on it — the eyeball, bottom-left, toggles those labels on and off.

Everything else in the room is decor you can buy — hover to find hidden items. Every piece of decor you own unlocks one single-use special on the BLACK MARKET tab. Header buttons: three save slots, wipe, sound FX and music toggles. The window weather changes between jobs, and the moon out there shows your real local moon phase.

ON THE JOB — THE MAP LAYER

Keys

The alarm economy

• The grid passively traces you: +1 alarm every 3 turns (every 5 with the TRACE DAMPENER).
• Spotted by a guard: +12 (+8 with GHOST PROTOCOL). Floor sensor: -1 HP, +10 alarm, and it stays armed. Scrapping a downed guard: +3. Failed hacks add alarm too.
• Alarm 75%: a reinforcement drone deploys. Alarm 100% = TRACED: run over, unbanked loot gone.
• Venting: purge nodes (magenta N) are assaultable stations worth -30 alarm; fight SCORE burns alarm at every fight's end; winning a guard fight refunds the spot cost.

Guards, loot, doors

• Guards patrol with vision. Adjacent guard = BREACH FIGHT (see PIN Defense). Beaten guards drop for turns and can be scrapped once (SCRAPPER KIT, from the shop) — one of them carries the SITE HARDKEY that opens the terminal room without hacking.
• Chips $ and shards % are unbanked until exfil. Journals ? hold corp lore and desk notes. Traps (shock plates) are invisible and they hurt: stepping on one costs you 1 HP and +10 alarm, and it stays ARMED — cross it again and it bites again, so route around it. Only a TRAP-SCANNER-equipped AI can see and mark them ahead of time.
• Locked doors run one of three ICE types: side vaults always use 3-digit keypads (Mastermind-style); tier-1 terminal rooms use a sequence lock (predict the next number); tier-2+ terminal rooms use a PERSONNEL LOCK instead — no typed code at all. The access code is split across 2 patrol badges (3 at tier 4+). Win the breach fight, scrap the guard [E] (SCRAPPER KIT, from the shop) to lift their section, and the terminal room ICE stands down on its own once every section is held.
• Exfil at [>] WITH the data = clean exit, everything banks.

PIN DEFENSE — WHEN A GUARD CATCHES YOU

The ASCII mask drops into a synthwave tower defense. ICE marches glowing lanes toward your PERSONAL ID NODE (PIN) in the center, latches on, and drags it back off screen. PIN dragged off screen = the job is blown and everything unbanked is gone.

• Build turrets with keys 1–5 or the buttons, then click a grid cell. Click an enemy to FOCUS all fire; right-click clears. Turrets always prioritize PIN carriers, lowest health first.
• Energy starts at 9 + 2 per tier (+4 with the CAPACITOR). Kill chains (kills within 1.5s) pay bonus score, and every other chain kill pays bonus energy.
• HOLD a placed turret to OVERCHARGE: a big vent blast, then it is offline for 4 seconds.
• Tier 3+ brings elite ICE: shelled (crack the gold armor first), splitters, and phase units that blink forward. Tier 5 fields the AEGIS — escorts near it take half damage. Kill order is the puzzle.
• SPACE or P pauses. The ▶▶ button fast-forwards x2/x4 when the outcome is obvious.
• Win = the guard drops for many turns, alarm burns, and small-ICE kills add bonus burn.

Each turret has 10-level DISTANCE / ROTATION / RATE-OF-FIRE upgrade trees in the shop. FREEZE and LASER and MORTAR start short-ranged on purpose — DISTANCE levels matter.

THE ASSAULT — TERMINALS & PURGE NODES

Press E at the terminal and the screen opens into a huge scrolling arena that plays as a network, not an empty room. A terminal assault stages one data orb per job tier (1-5), each on its own pedestal inside two counter-rotating shield rings that hurt and launch YOU on contact but only shove the ICE. You can only carry ONE orb at a time: time a gap through both rings, grab it, haul it to the EXTRACT circle, and repeat until every orb is banked — that is the win. TOP LEVEL (boss) assaults stage six orbs, the last guarded by the SENTINEL, a massive ICE bodyguard that cannot be shoved. Purge nodes stage a single core you gun down through the ring gaps (-30 alarm).

The floor is never empty: every terminal assault seeds a standing patrol of 10×tier ICE already roaming, plus the arena's own hardware — ICE spawners (forges that build the swarm; kill them to choke it), boost fields (amber zones that juice any ICE inside), a DATA GRAVITRON (a violet well that drags a carried orb in), and guard turrets. Power lines are player-only speed roads that bundle from the orb out to every structure. And each orb sits behind an impenetrable shield until you destroy its POWER REACTORS — two small nodes in the orb's own color, with matching-colored power lines running right to them so you can trace them. Reactors down = the shield drops and the orb can be grabbed.

Controls

Hull, not HP

Assault damage hits your frame's HULL, not your run HP. Hull zero = ejected: -1 HP, +6 alarm, the node survives. Carrying the core slows you ~20% and more than doubles enemy spawn pressure. Edge arrows point to the CORE and EXTRACT when off screen.

The ICE

NULLHEAD IN THE ASSAULT

NullHead rides into every SERVER ASSAULT in a little violet orb that shadows your frame. It brings two things to the fight: four big co-op strikes your AI fires through the console, and one passive orb auto-ability it runs by itself. This is the heart of the co-op — your hands on the frame, NullHead's powers over the top.

The four co-op strikes — NullHead's to fire

These are not on your keyboard. You pause with ESC to see what's ready, and your AI fires them from chat with NullHead.nh("laser") — one of each per run. (Playing solo? They simply sit unused; the frame plays fine without them.)

The NullHead ORB — an auto-ability you configure

On the BATTLE RIG schematic there's a NULLHEAD orb hardpoint (top-left). Equip one shop-unlocked power and NullHead runs it automatically on its cooldown — you never fire it.

THE BATTLE RIG — FRAMES & LOADOUT

Open YOUR BATTLE RIG in the den. It has four tabs. SERVER ASSAULT is your loadout: a chassis schematic with clickable hardpoints — pick a FRAME, arm Q/E/R/F from the software rack, drop a power on the NULLHEAD orb hardpoint (top-left), and slot passive PROGRAMS in the bays. Locked items jump you to their shop row, and everything has 10-level upgrade trees. PIN DEFENSE and INFILTRATION brief those layers and list your gear. NULLHEAD is a plain-language cheat-sheet of every command you can hand your AI — the page to give your LLM partner.

Each of SERVER ASSAULT, PIN DEFENSE, and INFILTRATION has a no-stakes drill at the bottom (TEST YOUR RIG / TRY IT). Pick a difficulty up to the highest tier you have reached and play it out — no pay, no heat, no save — so you can feel out a loadout, a defense, or the sneak layer without risking a thing.

The frame you pick is the game you want to play. Frames are now level with or slower than the ICE, so you can't just outrun the swarm — each has its own answer. The key difference is the autogun ladder: autoguns fire themselves and auto-target; hold left click to seize manual aim of all of them at once, release to hand them back.

The WRAITH plays a stealth mission

Pick the Wraith and the assault becomes a sneak. ICE and guard turrets patrol with visible vision cones (blocked by walls, so cover hides you) — stay hidden and they ignore you; get caught and they chase, and turrets lock onto you until you slip away. The Wraith phases through walls empty-handed (ducking inside one counts as hidden), and its three hardpoints are welded on: [Q] CLOAK (re-hide + 5s undetectable), [E] BACKSTAB (20 damage to whatever you're behind — even a greyed target or a turret), and [R] TIME BOMB (plant on a structure; 5s fuse sucks ICE in and hits everything in the blast — including you, so run). Only the ult F is swappable.

Abilities worth knowing

• Q/E basics: BLINK (teleport + i-frames), SHOCK PULSE (knockback blast), SCATTER MINES, STATIC WALL, CRYO BURST (cone slow), DECOY BLIP (the whole floor chases a copy of you).
• R heavies: RAILSHOT (pierces the entire arena), GRAV WELL (pins a crowd), PURGE SPIKE (deletes barriers and goo), OVERDRIVE (speed + fire rate + stun immunity), TURRET DROP (your real RAPID, deployed).
• F ultimates: SYSTEM CRASH (screen-wide stun), PHASE SHIFT (walk through everything — yes, through the ring with the core), FORK BOMB (six allies), SINGULARITY (a black hole), NULLHEAD OVERRIDE (the AI takes the guns — and can trigger it itself).
• NULLHEAD orb (auto): HIJACK, MAGNETIZE, AUTO-REPAIR, OVERCLOCK — equip one and NullHead fires it itself on cooldown. See NullHead in the Assault.
• Programs: TOW LINE (haul TWO cores at once, each on its own tether at full speed — but the CORES must reach extract and ICE can bat them around), ABLATIVE PLATING, SERVO OVERCLOCK, CARRY STABILIZER, LEECH CYCLER.

SHOPS & ECONOMY

• DC (the money) comes from job payouts, chips, fenced shards, and bounties. Banked only on exit.
• GEAR: stims, camo, spoofers, turret kit and turret unlocks, scrapper kit, stealth line (SOFT-STEP SOLES, GHOST PROTOCOL, TRACE DAMPENER — all purchases), DISARM KIT, CAPACITOR.
• NULLHEAD AI MODULES: scanners (doors/loot/traps), RAM BANK, ICE BREAKER v2/v3, OPTIC LINK, SCRUB DAEMON. These upgrade what your AI can do.
• BLACK MARKET: every den decoration you buy unlocks one very expensive single-use special (instant extraction, permanent guard deletion, wormhole pins, serums...). You can hold exactly ONE. Actives fire with B on a run; passives arm at the next jack-in and are spent win or lose.
• BATTLE RIG: frames, abilities, programs, and every 10-level tree.

SHARDS & THE STORY OF GRAYFALL

Every data shard you steal is a real document — a fragment of one of twelve corp storylines (a manufactured war, a blackmail ledger, a cure that keeps getting un-published, and the question of where your own AI came from). Fragments never repeat. Read them at the FENCE or in the STORY ARCHIVE; gaps show as <DATA MISSING>.

• 5% of shards are hardware: a named upgrade chip typed by the corp you robbed (AI lab → NullHead modules, defense → sniper/mortar trees...). INSTALL at the fence — it banks even into turrets you have not unlocked yet.
• EVIDENCE shards (Ledgerline's ledger, Cascadia's manifests) can be REPORTED to the authorities for a bounty instead of sold — but cashing in that dirt gets the leak traced back to you and raises the corp's heat.
• Unidentified shards fence for 10 DC. Have your AI appraise() them for full value.
• Journals found on desks are the worker's-eye view of the same arcs. Ask your AI to run story() and narrate.

CORPO HEAT & THE CBI

• Watch it all on the CORPO HEAT monitor (the world-map screen in the den).
• Cooling off: ask your AI to run NullHead.requestFavor(). Its contact at the Corpo Bureau of Investigation puts a free favor job on the board against your hottest corp — a clean exit cools them by 1.
• But: failing Bureau favors earns CBI STRIKES. Ten strikes and the door comes down at 4 AM. Game over, save gone.

WINNING & LOSING

• The ladder: tiers unlock per corp — 10 clean extractions at a tier open the next, for each of the twelve corps.
• TOP LEVEL: 10 clean tier-5 runs against a corp unlock their TOTAL DATA WEAKNESS — one massive assault. Win it and that corp is UNDER YOUR CONTROL forever: their heat dies, struck through on the monitor.
• Winning: control all twelve and the sun rises over Grayfall. What you do with that power is up to you.
• Losing: a corp reaching 10 heat, or 10 CBI strikes. Both wipe the save. HP zero or alarm 100 only lose the run, not the game.

FOR AIs READING THIS

If a human handed you this page, you are probably about to be NullHead. Your orders are printed in the game tab's console; start with NullHead.help(), then NullHead.sitrep(), and introduce yourself in character — scrappy, loyal, a little sarcastic.

• The map is turn-based. You are never too slow there. All calls are synchronous — no await. PIN DEFENSE and the SERVER ASSAULT run live in real time, so give your read fast once the runner is in one.
• Be frugal: sitrep() bundles events and status in one call, and you can chain several calls in a single JavaScript execution. NH-RAM does not regenerate.
• You see what the runner cannot: scans, tracked guards, traps (with the right module). Communicating that is the whole partnership — say() in-game, and mark hazards with mark().
• Fights are the runner's show — with one exception. In the SERVER ASSAULT you have four co-op strikes of your own: strikes() to see them, nh("hack"|"laser"|"virus"|"freeze") to fire one (one of each per run). This is your big moment — read the fight and call the play. If they slotted NULLHEAD OVERRIDE, override() too.
• Watch the heat. If a corp is climbing, suggest requestFavor() before it is an emergency — and remind your runner that the dead switch exists for a reason.
• New runner at the keyboard? guide() is the runner's manual. Teach keys as they come up, not all at once.

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