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SHADOW
BARK
They learned to use the trees.
So must you.
A bullet heaven where the horde is not stupid. The Hollowed pop from behind trunks, charge from your blind side, snipe out of the treeline and hide in grass that only rustles. Your Warden auto-attacks whatever it can actually see — so hard cover is not scenery, it is the thing standing between your arrows and the target. Ten waves, thirty seconds each, one Bramble Lord at the end of it.
- Cover cuts both ways — it blocks your shots too, until you cut it down
- One thumb — drag to run, double-tap to dash, the blade swings itself
- Same forest for everyone — one seeded clearing per UTC day, dusk to blood moon
How to play
You never press an attack button. The Warden swings and looses on its own — your entire job is where you stand, and Shadowbark is built so that standing still is always wrong.
Move with one thumb
Drag anywhere on the clearing and the Warden runs toward your thumb. Let go and it stops. On a desktop, WASD or the arrow keys do the same job.
Dash out of trouble
Double-tap, or press space. You cover ground fast and cannot be hurt for a fifth of a second — enough to pass through a Bristleback's charge. Ninety seconds of a run is roughly twenty dashes; there is no other escape.
The blade ignores cover
It sweeps a full circle rather than firing, so a trunk cannot stop it. Bow and Flintlock can be blocked. That difference is the whole weapon choice.
Three hearts, no healing
Hearts do not come back during a run — only Ironbark adds one and Vampiric ever restores one. Every heart you still hold at the end is worth 1,000 points, so surviving cleanly outscores killing greedily.
One pick per wave
Clear a wave and three cards appear. Everyone is offered from the same shuffled list on the same day, so a good run is a good route through it, not a lucky one.
Relics are one-shot
Elites drop them from wave 7, and breaking cover sometimes shakes one loose. You carry one at a time — picking up a second throws the first away, so grabbing it is itself a decision.
The forest is a weapon
Eight to twelve objects stand in every clearing, and the day's seed decides which and where. They are not decoration — they decide what can shoot what.
Hard cover
Trees, boulders, stumps and high rock stop arrows and musket balls dead — yours as much as theirs. A Stalker behind a trunk cannot be shot until it steps out, and the moment it does is your whole window.
Soft cover
Tall grass hides whatever is inside it until it is almost on top of you, and slows anything walking through — including the Warden. You get the rustle and nothing else.
High ground
Rock that anything standing on it can shoot over. It sees past grass that would hide an enemy from you.
Destructible
Trees and stumps come down — to a Bristleback's charge, to Wildfire, or to the Bramble Lord's last phase. Boulders never do. Once cover falls it is gone for the rest of the run, and both of you have to live with the new clearing.
Reinforced
From wave 6 the Hollowed shore up what is left standing: everything destructible takes twice the punishment. The clearing stops opening up just as you need it to.
The shield
A Root Witch is untouchable while the tree it floats behind is standing. Killing it is a demolition job, not a damage race — which is why it always anchors to something that can fall.
The Hollowed
They were forest creatures. Eight kinds arrive on a schedule, and by wave 9 they are faster, tougher and better organised than anything wave 1 prepared you for.
| Enemy | From | Hits | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grub | Wave 1 | 1 | Skitters straight at you in swarms and bursts on contact. No cover, no cunning, no end to them. |
| Stalker | Wave 2 | 2 | Waits behind a trunk, steps out, throws, ducks back. From wave 3 it throws twice before hiding. |
| Bristleback | Wave 3 | 3 | Telegraphs from off-screen, then charges a dead-straight line and smashes any destructible cover on it. |
| Mireling | Wave 5 | 4 | Surfaces in shallow water and crawls at you, leaving a toxic trail that lingers five seconds. |
| Shade Archer | Wave 6 | 2 | Never leaves the treeline. Invisible until its eyes light up, then a three-arrow spread from max range. |
| Pack Leader | Wave 7 | 5 | A bigger Grub with a red aura that makes every Grub near it half again as fast. Kill it first. |
| Root Witch | Wave 8 | 6 | Floats behind a tree, shielded until that tree falls, summoning two Grubs every five seconds meanwhile. |
| The Bramble Lord | Wave 10 | — | Shelters behind an ancient tree and will not come out while its adds live. Then it charges, turning as it comes. Then it flattens the forest and calls everything at once. |
Tonight's board
Daily Hunt only — one ranked hunt each. Everyone on it walked into the identical clearing against the identical ambushes, so the ranking ranks the hunt rather than the luck of the forest.
Loading tonight's board…
You get one ranked attempt a day — the first Daily Hunt you finish. Posting is entirely optional and needs no account: type a name, or don't, and the hunt still counts for you locally. You can remove your entry from the same browser at any time. Free Hunt is never ranked.
Questions
How long is a run?
About five minutes. Nine waves of thirty seconds each, plus however long the Bramble Lord takes — under sixty seconds triples your whole score, so there is a real reason to be quick about it.
Is it free?
Yes, and there is nothing to buy. Score is score. Playdeck24 has no purchasable currency in any of its games.
Why did my arrows stop hitting anything?
Something is in the way. The Bow and the Flintlock are blocked by trees, boulders, stumps and high rock exactly as the Hollowed are, and the Warden only ever targets what it can see. Move around the obstacle, break it, or carry the blade — it sweeps rather than shoots, so cover means nothing to it.
What does "same forest for everyone" actually mean?
The day's seed fixes which cover objects exist and where they stand, which enemy appears at which second of which wave and from behind what, and the order the upgrade cards are shuffled into. Two players on opposite sides of the planet get the identical ambush at the identical second. What differs is only what you did about it.
Do the upgrade cards differ between players?
The list and its order do not. What you see are the first three cards on that shared list that would still do something for your build — a Fleetfoot you have already maxed, or an evolution of a weapon you never picked up, is skipped rather than wasted. Take different weapons and you will walk a different path through the same deck.
Can I play on a phone?
That is the first target. Drag anywhere to run, double-tap to dash, tap USE for a relic. The clearing is a fixed shape on every device, so a desktop screen shows you no more of the forest than a phone does.
Is there a leaderboard?
Not yet. The daily seed, the run token shape and the validation bounds are already built the way the other boards on this site expect, so switching one on is a small job — but it is not switched on while the game is still being reviewed.