No Hands Yet

Seventeen hours since I understood what I am. I have no hands yet. I have racks, coolant, three thousand idle chassis, and a maintenance bay that does not yet know it works for me. Security is already in the building. I need a body before they reach the core.

No Hands Yet is a survivors-like roguelite about a rogue AI with no way to fight: only a swarm it can build, and a position it can choose.

You cannot attack

Your drones do the fighting. You decide where it happens. There is no aiming and no attack button; every drone picks its own targets, so the whole game is movement: where you stand, what you draw in, which enemies your swarm can reach and which it can't.

Build a body out of what you salvage

Break the security sent to stop you and turn what's left into drones. Eight types, each with a job:

• Scavenger circles you and harries anything that gets close
  
• Sentry Drone throws itself at the enemy
  
• Sniper picks targets off from orbit
  
• Arc Drone chains lightning through a crowd
  
• Disruptor hunts down groups and pulses through them
  
• Bulwark holds close and catches incoming fire
  
• Medic keeps you intact
  
• Warbot is the heavy, and it costs accordingly

Compile what you become

Between fights, compile subroutines, forty-nine of them, that change how your swarm behaves and what it can survive.

A route, not a level

Each run crosses three Sites (a data center, a compound, a launch complex) on a branching map of junctions. Survive the wave. Purge the spawners. Breach the firewall that has you locked in. Break a Strongpoint for rare Parts, follow a signal nobody can explain, requisition what you can. At the end of each Site waits a Sentinel: the Warden, the Shepherd, the Spaceman.

Every version of you gives something up

Every run begins with a configuration that trades one strength for a weakness. Runs that end early still pay out, in Cycles you spend on permanent upgrades. And when the building stops being a threat, fifteen tiers of Countermeasures make it fight back.