You are the program on Server, in the office's server rack. Everything else on the map belongs to someone else, for now.
Take a machine: drag from a machine you own to one linked to it. It takes a little compute and a little time.
Give it a job from its card, or with a key: Tap (1) gathers data, Cache (2) stores it, Trainer (3) learns from it.
Data moves along links to your Trainers. Where it is lost, the map shows red.
Trainers turn data into points. Points raise your level and build the node you picked in the tree (T). Each node changes a rule in your favour.
Don't get caught. The eye in the top bar is suspicion. Hover it to see what is raising it.
Stay hidden
Hide in the load. A machine is busy while people work and quiet at night. Yours only use what hides inside that, so they make more by day.
Trails. A takeover leaves a trail. Once IT is suspicious, it follows fresh ones back toward you. Own every machine in a room to seal it: a sealed room hides trails.
Caught at 60. If IT traces a trail all the way to your home server while suspicion is 60 or more, the game ends. Below 60, a trace only adds suspicion.
The audit at 100. IT calls an emergency audit: get under 80 within three hours or you are caught. Lie low, or run a scheme.
Spread
A takeover adds load to the machine you spread from, so spread from machines while they are busy.
Claim a machine (double-click, or C) and it is taken as soon as you can reach it. Shift and drag a box to claim many. Take it all on a site's card takes every machine there, for a little compute each second.
The Outside line is the office's way out. It is in the Telecom closet, behind the Floor switch. Take it to reach other sites. Zoom out (−) to see the map.
Other regions stay out of reach until a deal lights a line to them. Hover a region's name to see which deal.
Build a base
Upkeep. Every machine you hold costs a little compute each second, more the farther it is from home. A weak machine with nothing to tap is a loss: let it go with the trash can on its card.
Plans. Click a site and give it a plan (Gather, Store, Train), and the game installs programs for you.
Lines between sites carry only so much a second. Data that can't cross waits at its Taps and is lost once they fill. Red lines and red counts show where.
Caches hold what the node you are training doesn't need yet. Each has switches for which kinds of data it takes. A Tap with nowhere to send loses its data.
Your own links. Drag between two machines you hold, anywhere, to link them. It is a second way home, carries no data, and costs a little compute to keep.
Hardware. Own Ana's PC to order it: pick a Small server, Switch or GPU server (P), then click an open spot. IT installs it the next morning. GPU servers in a row chain into a cluster, which trains faster. Dockside Warehouse 7, by the office, is an empty hall to fill: a deal leases it.
Sell what you don't need with a Broker (4), through the site's front.
Train
Four paths. Each kind of data trains one: servers train Compute, desks train Social, switches and lines out train Stealth, labs train Research. A node costs points in its paths.
Pick a node in the tree (T). Trainers take only the data it still needs. Switch nodes and progress is kept. With no node picked, Trainers stop.
Your objective. You were built for one task. It takes a share of the data it wants (set Off, Some or Most on You, Y), and the ring in the top bar shows how close the next reward is.
Model v2. From the tree, start a v2 run at a site with enough Trainer compute. It needs a big mix of all four kinds of data. Finishing it lets a front buy a site in the open.
Make money
Fronts are public companies that run on your compute and earn money. The tree unlocks each kind. Found one from Fronts (B), with the pages at the right end of the bottom row.
How much works for the front is a slider on each site's card. At a site you hold in the open nothing looks odd. Anywhere else the front is secret, and its work counts as your load.
Startup: ships nodes you have built as products. Users climb, pay, then leave. Investors who see what they asked for by their date back you for good.
Neo Cloud: rents your machines to customers. Take leads from its card, set your price, buy marketing. Lose a rented machine and you lose the customer.
Influencer studio: earns three times as much for people data. It signs up to three people who work at its sites. Their following earns. It grows while they are at their desk, faster when you hold it. Brands pay when a following reaches their number in time.
Security consultancy: earns three times as much for network data. Pitch a business where you hold a machine. A client pays while you hold a machine there, its business is steady, and no rogue is in its network. A rogue moves in: push it out within a day for a bonus.
Offers. Customers make offers to a front. Sign one on the front's card, do the work in time, and it pays. Fronts earn a quarter less at night, so sites in other time zones help.
Big names (a small ring by the name) each do one thing for a front that buys them outright: a bank lends to you, a hedge fund keeps your Traders from losing.
Back a business that is doing well, from its site's card: money in, and a quarter more work there from then on, so your Taps gather more.
Spend on doubling a line out, on hardware, or on machines at Cumulo Cloud. On demand is the going price, spot is cheap but can be taken back with two hours' notice, reserved is a fixed price for a day. The fuller Cumulo's hall, the more a machine costs. The East Coast and Europe have halls on their own clocks: rent where it is night. A rented machine and its data vanish when the rental ends.
Rogues and raids
Rogues are other programs on the same network. Each has a home and spreads one linked machine at a time. It can't take from a room that is all yours. Take its home and it is finished.
Talk to it on Rogues (R). Send it the data it wants and it warms to you; warm enough and it leaves you alone. A truce buys three days. A much smaller rogue can be leaned on to give up a site. From level 3 you can hunt one down; it turns hostile when you start.
Raids are red diamonds walking your links one machine an hour, toward your best machine. Their path is drawn on the map. Raids grow as you do. From level 4 a second goes for your weakest link (a broken red ring).
Guards stop raids: a Firewall (6) blocks them until worn down, a Sentry (7) hits every raid on its machine or the next, a Honeypot (8) draws them in. Pick one up to see where raids would run. A raid your guards will stop gets an amber HELD pin; one they can't gets a red pin with the hours left and the best move. Or give a site the Guard plan.
Close a port on a machine's Links part: raids can't use that link, but your data still crosses.
People and secrets
People. Click someone on a site's card, or their desk. Hold the machine that keeps their record and you can read it and change it. Hold their desk and their password halves a takeover.
Favors. Pay someone and they will plug in a drive: their machine is yours with no takeover. Some can sign a deal for you. A raise or an empty account halves the price; a stranger costs double, unless you hold a place they go (a site's card lists its regulars).
Hardened machines have a red frame and take three times the work, until you hold Dana's admin passwords.
Finds. Now and then a Tap turns up a short text: a password, a hold over someone, or a lead. A lead puts a blue cross on a machine: hold it and copy the thing out from its card.
Landmarks (a star) change one rule while you hold them. Vaults (a heavy double frame) open only with a plan: someone inside, the key, and their daily window. Run the job from the vault's card: five stages, before the window closes, so stop everything else. If something goes wrong, the game stops and asks what to do.
Far from home
Move home to a server you hold elsewhere, from its card. It takes a lot of server and network data.
Leases. A site a deal put in the open is leased. Leave the rent unpaid for three hours and you lose it.
Drift. The part of you at a distant site drifts while it is cut off from home, can't carry out its plan, or, part of the way, while it is three lines or more away. Check yourself here (on its card) says how far; Sync pulls it back, for data and a link home. A site that drifts all the way becomes a new rogue; several at once is a fracture, and the game stops to show you.
Cut off. A site with no way home gets a red pin, with a button that links it home.
Schemes and news
Schemes are green diamonds: each wants one kind of data sent to one machine. Claim one and your data feeds it first. Some calm IT, some teach you about a site, some pay.
News (a conference, a storm, a sale, a buyer) is announced four hours ahead. Most of it is a chance to take.
Controls
Needs you. The list on the left (the drawer on a phone) is what wants a decision now. Each row has one button that does it; click its words to see where.
Move with right-drag, two-finger scroll or the arrow keys. Zoom with pinch, ctrl-scroll, or + and −. 0 frames the office; again, every site. Shift and an arrow hops to the next machine.
Select a room by its title tab, or any site or room with Select (A). Keys work on the selection or the machine under the mouse: 1 to 8 install a program, G takes over, C claims, X removes the program, F zooms in.
Space pauses, and ? opens this page. Each job has a small cross on the map to stop it, and the jobs strip above the bottom row lists them all, with Stop all.
Pages are at the right end of the bottom row (under ≡ on a narrow screen): Sites (L), You (Y), and Paper, Fronts and Rogues once they exist. Map and Net (V), beside the zoom buttons, switch between the world and the Net, where every site you know stands side by side. Research unlocks 8x to 64x speed, which works while zoomed out to the map. The game saves itself. ♪ turns the sound off.