Highrisers

Highrisers is a pixel-art exploration and survival RPG set in a procedurally generated city. Four survivors are trapped in a skyscraper and must scavenge, craft and work together to survive the nightly attacks of the dreamers. Their only chance to escape is an old, crashed helicopter on the rooftop, which they can repair to travel from rooftop to rooftop.

The city and the dreamers

A mysterious prion disease has left its victims trapped in an eternal dream. They have transformed into the dreamers, sleepwalking, zombielike creatures that shun the light. They hide in the dim urban canyons and lower levels of high-rise buildings, emerging at night to attack those still resisting.

Without a functioning society, the city quickly becomes hostile. You search every corner of each building for spare parts, tools and food, and prepare for the dreamers’ nightly onslaught. Procedurally generated levels create high-rise buildings of different types and challenges, with special floors offering valuable loot or unique interactions.

Scavenge and craft

You decide how to tackle each building, gathering materials and crafting what the survivors need. Recipes include weapons ranging from clubs and crossbows to improvised firearms and explosives, as well as barricades, workbenches, tools, machinery, medicine and food. Advanced inventions require research and particular skills, and the survivors cannot learn everything, so choosing what knowledge to acquire matters.

Work together

Each survivor has an individual skill tree that unlocks recipes, perks, options and powerful interactions between the four characters. The survivors can pool their resources, skills and knowledge to improve their chances of making it through another night.

Escape by helicopter

The crashed HC-27 cannot regain full flight capability, but you can repair, modify and improve it to carry more goods and travel longer distances between rooftops. To make it through the night, you must plan carefully and deal with the dreamers by fighting, luring, immobilizing, hiding from, deterring or stalling them until sunrise.