Ricochet Protocol

You have one round of ammunition. Fire it and it ricochets off every surface without losing any energy, forever, until you catch it — and it is lethal the entire time, to the enemies and to you.

How it plays

• You are not aiming at an enemy. You are aiming at the wall that will send the slug through the enemy, and then getting out of its own way. A dotted line shows the first three bounces while you aim, and it is not an approximation: the preview and the slug run the same simulation over the same geometry, so what it draws is exactly what happens.
• The slug stays in the air while you fight. You can hear where it is — it carries a spatialised whine that tracks its speed and position, so you can locate your own shot behind you by ear — and it leaves a bright trail that is the game's memory of where it has been. When its predicted path turns back toward you the screen warns you in red. Three independent warnings, because dying to your own shot has to be survivable knowledge rather than a surprise.
• You reload by catching it. Walk into it, or press catch within two metres for a snap-catch. The snap is the skill.
• Hold fire to charge. A charged slug travels at 78 m/s instead of 42 and punches through the first enemy instead of bouncing off it — and then keeps bouncing, faster, and far more dangerous to you.
• Eight waves and a boss. Drones hover, Walkers close on you, Splitters become two Drones wherever you kill them so placement matters, and Mirrors are a rotating reflective panel with a core you can only reach from behind. The Warden is a rotating cube with one vulnerable face at a time, including its top — sometimes the answer is the ceiling.
• One hit kills, from anything, including your own slug. Restart is 0.8 seconds.

The arena is generated: a closed 32×32×10 m box with cover pillars on a Poisson-disc layout and two to four wall segments canted off square, which is what makes each seed's bounce geometry its own puzzle. Canted walls are a different colour, deliberately, so the angles are something you learn rather than something that happens to you. Every layout is verified before you play it — the generator measures whether shots fired from the spawn actually come back through the space, and rejects the ones that do not.

Flat-shaded untextured polygons, one hard colour per face, and not a single dynamic light — chosen so a slug at 42 m/s stays readable against the walls.