Your first day in Dead Mile
Move, scavenge, equip and survive. Combat is automatic: your job is to keep a clear escape route.
Controls & menus
- Drag the inner ring on mobile; use WASD, arrow keys or mouse dragging on desktop. Drag the outer ring to rotate its buttons. Attacks automatically target enemies within range and line of sight.
- PICK UP collects the nearest item; GATHER collects resources. Move close—about 40 world units, not screen pixels—and avoid walls between you and the target.
- Equip a ranged weapon through MENU → STATUS before switching MELEE / RANGED. BAG holds items and lets you eat berries. BUILD opens construction; MAP shows exploration; RANKING is a local ranking experience, not live multiplayer.
- Use the top-right pause button (or Esc on desktop). Sound and volume are in the pause menu. REST is not a pause button.
A safe first day
- Find an open escape route. Pick up equipment, then actually equip it in MENU → STATUS. Picking it up alone does not equip it.
- Gather berries and wood; leave free inventory slots. Watch FOOD and TIRED, and eat berries through BAG. Try a storage box, barricade and gate once you have materials. Keep exits clear.
- Choose your night route before dark. Resting during the day skips straight to night—use pause if you only need a break.
Food, fatigue & nightfall
- One game day lasts 5 minutes: about 3 minutes of daylight and 2 of night. Pausing stops game time. REST takes about 5 seconds, clears fatigue and skips to the next day/night phase; visible living enemies prevent rest. You cannot rest while riding or downed.
- Maximum health starts at 5. At FOOD 10, a living character recovers 1 health per 10 seconds. Berries add 5 FOOD up to 10; they do not instantly heal. FOOD 1–5 reduces movement to 80%; FOOD 0 reduces it to 50% and slows gathering.
- Gathering ordinary resources adds fatigue. At TIRED 5 gathering slows; at 10 it stops. Hunger mainly affects movement and gathering, rather than automatically draining health.
- Night enemies pursue you. Each region has a blood-moon reinforcement budget of day number × 100, with at most 30 blood-moon enemies alive at once. This is neither the total enemy cap nor a promise that every budgeted enemy will spawn. Daylight stops new reinforcements, not existing enemies.
Inventory, building & farming
- BAG has 10 slots; wearing a backpack does not expand it. Materials stack to 99. Resource spots can be gathered once per game day; moving or taking damage may interrupt gathering.
- Read discard confirmations: seeds drop at your feet, but other selected items are destroyed. Store valuables in a storage box.
- Recipes: Berry plot—2 wood; Storage box—8 wood + 2 metal; Wood barricade—5 wood; Wood gate—8 wood + 2 metal. Place nearby on valid terrain, without blocking region entrances. Each region allows 30 functional buildings, including at most 5 boxes and 10 plots.
- Buildings can be repaired or dismantled. Dismantling returns half of each material, rounded down, if inventory space is available. Berry plants have a 50% chance to give an extra seed. Plant one seed; no watering is needed. After 5 minutes of game-world time, harvest 3 berries and replant. Rest advances growth; closing the page does not grow crops offline.
- Campfire, metal wall/gate, workbench and forge are ART PREVIEW · RULES PENDING. They have no finished gameplay functions and their preview placements are not saved as functional buildings.
Explore the nine regions
- Regions A–I are open. Travel through designated road exits, not any map edge. A brief dark transition is normal when changing regions. Drag and zoom MAP to inspect explored terrain.
- Find the motorcycle near the starting region’s roads or check its region on MAP. Use ENTER / EXIT nearby. It moves at about twice walking speed; obstacles still block it. Riding prevents gathering, pickup and equipment changes. Ordinary contact attacks do not hurt the rider, but explosions can. Exit onto clear ground.
Quick answers
- No shooting? Equip a ranged weapon, select RANGED and check range and walls. No pickup/gathering? Check distance, the correct action, bag space, fatigue, riding and whether that resource was collected today.
- Moving slowly? Check FOOD; melee swings also slow movement. No sound? Start the game first, then check pause-menu sound settings.
- Progress saves locally in this browser. Use CONTINUE SAVED RUN when available. There is no account cloud save; clearing site data or changing browser, domain or device may lose access. A new run replaces the current save.
- Corpses stop participating in combat after their death animation; they remain for 30 seconds, fade during the final 2 seconds, and are limited to 40 per region. They are cleared on region changes and are not saved.