How to play
The city in real time
This is Zero Remain seen from above and played live: the same quarantined city, the same two sides, the same count, but everyone is in the city at the same moment and a city lasts minutes instead of weeks.
The count
Every city starts with a number of souls hiding in its buildings. At the top of the screen: how many are still alive inside, how many have been walked out through the wall, and how many the dead took. Those three always add up to the souls the city started with.
A city ends in one of three ways:
- It falls: nobody is left alive inside.
- It is cleansed: no dead are left standing. Everyone still hiding is counted as saved.
- The wall closes: after 25 minutes the cordon seals the city, and everyone still inside is lost.
Twenty seconds later the next city opens, with new streets and new names, and everyone starts again as a survivor.
The living
- Search inside a building to find weapons, ammunition, first aid kits and serum. What you find depends on the place: police stations have guns, fire stations axes, hospitals kits, biotech labs the serum.
- Barricade from the inside, standing by a door. Building higher gets harder.
- Gather the people hiding in a building: up to six follow you. Walk them to any checkpoint in the wall (the yellow gaps) and they are out. Let go of them inside a building and they hide there.
- Attack the dead. Guns are loud: every one of the dead nearby hears them.
- Heal yourself or someone next to you with a first aid kit. Serum brings a dead player back to the living.
Barricades are the doors
A building with no barricade is open to everybody. Up to thinly barricaded, the living can still climb in from the street, and the dead cannot. Above that, only people already inside can come and go. That is the whole social contract of a barricade: strong enough to stop the dead, too strong for strangers.
The dead
If you fall, you stand up a few seconds later as one of the dead. You are slower, you cannot use anything, and you can only say the sounds a dead throat still makes. Pull barricades down from the street (attack next to a door), get inside, and feed: every person you take stands up as one more of the wandering dead. You can also take the people a survivor is leading. Put down, you stand again. A survivor with serum can bring you back; or start over as a survivor from the menu, and your old body keeps walking.
Night
From 22:00 to 06:00 UTC the city is dark, and the dead are worse at doors and at anyone in reach, as in the slow city.
Controls
Phone: drag on the left half of the screen to walk. The big button attacks the nearest enemy in front of you. The middle button does what makes sense where you stand. Items opens what you carry.
Keyboard and mouse: WASD or arrows to walk, the mouse to aim, click or Space to attack. F search, B barricade, G gather or let go, H heal, J serum, E feed, 1 to 6 weapons, Enter to talk, M map, I items.
Your name
There is no account. Your name and a key are kept in this browser; nothing else about you is stored. Clear the browser and you pick a new name.