Excursia

Excursia is a free third-person extraction shooter that you play in your browser. You go up into Copperfield Basin with the kit you choose, search it for salvage, fight or slip past the machines that have taken it over, and get out through a hatch before the surface is sealed.

It's PvPvE: the machines of the Chorus are after you, and so are other runners. What you bring back is yours to keep, sell or build with. If you go down up there, you lose everything you carried except what's in your safe pocket. So every raid comes down to the same question: push on for better loot, or get out with what you have.

Raids are shared with other players, and you're in one within seconds. There's nothing to download and no account to make. Play it with a mouse and keyboard, or full screen on a phone or tablet with touch controls made for it.

1. Gear up in the Warren. The Warren is the underground settlement you start from. Take two weapons, a shield, a backpack and four quick slots of meds and grenades from your stash, and put the one thing you can't bear to lose in your safe pocket.
2. Deploy. You come up at the edge of the basin under the current forecast: Golden Hour, Bright Noon, Dust Haze, Overcast or Cold Dawn, each with its own light, fog and wind.
3. Scavenge. Search crates, lockers, toolboxes, weapon cases, car trunks, strongboxes, machine wrecks and the remains of fallen runners. The more dangerous the ground, the better the loot.
4. Survive. Machines hunt you by sight and sound, and other runners want what's in your backpack.
5. Get out. There are six hatches round the basin. Call the capsule at one and hold out while it comes up, with the alarm drawing machines in, then step aboard. Everything you carry is yours. Anyone still up top when the 20 minutes run out is sealed out and loses it all.

If you've played ARC Raiders or Escape from Tarkov, you know the idea: go in with your kit, take what you can and get out alive, or lose it all. Those are big games for a gaming PC or a console, which you buy, download and sign in to. Excursia brings the same idea to a browser tab, for free.

The Chorus took the sky and drove people underground. Its machines hold the basin now, from small drones to a giant asleep in a hangar.

• MidgeDroneA small drone on four fans that circles you and fires bursts of bolts. Shoot off a fan and it can barely aim; shoot off two and it falls.
• SkitterCrawlerA six-legged crawling bomb. It rushes you, beeps once it's close and blows up, unless you shoot its canister first.
• LamplighterScoutA floating searchlight. If its beam finds you, it sounds a siren and calls in Midges. Aim for the lamp.
• StiltWalkerAn armoured four-legged walker with a cannon and a machine gun, which likes to fight from a distance. The glowing core on its back is its weak spot.
• PicketTurretA turret on a post that guards the walls of Harrow Garrison, sweeping its sector with bursts of fire. Hit the eye above its guns.
• WardenBossThe tripod that guards the Fallen Spire, with a sweeping laser, mortars and Skitters of its own. Its three capacitors have to go before its hull takes real damage.
• ColossusBossThe giant asleep in the hangar at Harrow Garrison. Wake it and it comes out with missiles, a rail cannon and a swarm of Midges. Break two of its knees and it collapses for a while, with its core laid open.

Machines don't see you all at once. Their eyes turn yellow when they've noticed something and red when they're coming for you. Distance, keeping still, crouching and cover all slow them down, and they can't see through trees or bushes, so you can often slip past a fight you don't want. Gunshots carry a long way; footsteps only close up.

The basin is a square kilometre of towns, farms, rail yards, forest and hills, ringed by mountains, with a river and a reservoir running through it. The further you go into dangerous ground, the better the loot and the more machines guard it.

• The Fallen SpireA crashed machine vessel with a tall fin and a field of debris. The Warden guards it, and some of the best loot in the basin is inside.
• Harrow GarrisonA military depot the machines took over: walls and watchtowers with turrets, barracks, bunkers, and the hangar where the Colossus sleeps.
• Ashcombe ResearchA research campus with three floors of labs and offices, a data centre, and the hall where they took a captured Stilt apart.
• Aldercrest TowerA 50-metre tower with a café in a glass pod near the top and an open deck that looks out over the whole basin, binoculars included.
• Copperfield TrustThe old county bank. Its vault opens only with a Trust Vault Keycard, and once it's open, it's open for everyone.
• Greywater DamA dam with a spillway, intake towers, a turbine hall and a walkway along its crest.
• Kestrel AirstripA runway with two hangars, a control tower, a fuel farm and a crashed plane.
• MarrowtownA town along three roads, with a market street and a plaza.
• Rust YardsA rail yard of boxcars you can walk into, stacked containers, a parked train and a gantry crane.

Round them are Relay Station, Outpost Kessel, Kessler Quarry, Greywater Waterworks, the Brightfield Array, the Glasshouse Nursery, Hollow Farm, Linden Row, the Dustline Motor Lodge, Cutter's Mill, Turbine Ridge and Copperfield Halt, with homesteads and campsites in between.

There are seven guns, and each comes in three marks, from Mk.I to Mk.III, each harder hitting than the last:

• the Rivet pistol and the Sawtooth SMG;
• the Drover assault rifle and the Breaker shotgun;
• the Lookout marksman rifle and the Longreach sniper rifle, whose scope you steady by holding your breath;
• the Coil Lance, an energy rifle that charges each shot, goes through armour and hits machines hardest.

Grenades come in three kinds: the Frag Charge, the Pulse Charge, which stuns machines and drains shields, and the Chatterbox Lure, which plays machine chatter that draws machines away from you. A shield takes part of every hit until it's spent, and it doesn't recharge in a raid, so carry Shield Cells. A bigger backpack carries more home. In all there are 70 items, from ammo and meds to machine parts and the valuables people left behind.

Back in the Warren, everything you brought home goes into your stash.

• Exchange: buy ammo, meds and gear, sell what you found for scrip, and check the day's deal on a better gun.
• Workbench: craft meds, gear and guns from the salvage you bring home, and upgrade a gun from Mk.I to Mk.III.
• Skills: raids earn experience, and every level gives you a point for one of 21 perks, from quieter footsteps and a second safe pocket to a last breath that saves you once a raid.
• Contracts: three jobs at a time, like toppling a Stilt or sweeping Marrowtown, for scrip.
• Records: your raids, extractions, survival rate and best haul.

Lose all your weapons and you can claim a free kit, so you can always go back up.

Raids are shared. Up to 12 players can be in the same raid, and you're matched in seconds, sometimes into a raid already under way, with less time left on its clock.

Hold B to talk. Voice chat carries about 45 metres from where you stand, and walls muffle it, so you can call a truce, warn someone off, or give yourself away.

Not every runner you meet is hostile. Some keep their distance, some shoot on sight, and helping one against a machine can make a friend. Only one runner can search a container at a time, and a vault opened at Copperfield Trust stays open for everyone.

With a mouse and keyboard, move with W A S D, sprint with Shift, crouch with C and dodge roll with V. Space jumps, climbs ledges and vaults through windows and over low walls. Fire with the left mouse button and aim with the right; R reloads, 1 and 2 switch weapons, 3 to 6 use your quick slots and G throws a grenade. Hold F to search and to call a capsule, Tab opens your inventory, M the map, and X swaps the shoulder you look over.

On a phone or tablet, played sideways, your left thumb moves and your right thumb looks. There are fire buttons on both sides, buttons for everything else, aim assist, and gyroscope aiming if you want it. You can move and size every button. On an iPhone, add the game to your home screen to play full screen.

Is Excursia free?

Yes. It's free to play, and there's nothing to buy. Scrip, the Warren's money, comes from selling what you find and from contracts.

Do I need to download anything?

No. Excursia runs in your browser tab. The first visit takes a few seconds to load, and after that your browser keeps what it can, so the game opens faster.

Do I need an account?

No. Your progress is saved in your browser and on our server under a random key, so you carry on where you left off. It stays with the browser you play in.

Can I play on a phone or tablet?

Yes. On a touch screen Excursia has controls made for it, and it plays full screen with the device turned sideways.

Is it multiplayer?

Yes. Raids are shared, with up to 12 players in one, and you can talk to anyone near you with voice chat.

What happens if I die?

You lose everything you carried except what's in your safe pocket, and your backpack goes back to the basic Satchel. Your stash in the Warren is safe.

What do I need to run it?

A browser with WebGL 2, such as Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer, or Safari or Chrome on a phone or tablet. It runs smoothly on an ordinary laptop, and the graphics settings go from Low to Ultra.