builder vs beast

# Builders vs Beast

**An asymmetric multiplayer game: the builders mine, fortify and get rich behind their doors, while the Beast, a giant Warden played by a friend or by the computer, hunts them down.**
Up to 14 players per game. In the spirit of StarCraft II's *Probes vs Zealot* arcade map, with rules of its own.

## How a game works

Everyone arrives in the **hub**: vote for a map at the portals, pick your role at the statues, and ring the bell when you are ready. If several players volunteer to be the Beast, one is drawn at random. If nobody does, the computer plays it, so you can also play alone.

The builders get a head start while the Beast waits in its lair. Then the hunt begins. The builders win if the Beast dies; the Beast wins when the last builder falls.

## Playing as a builder

- **Find an enclosure.** Follow a trail to one of the rooms scattered across the map. There are far more of them than players, so the Beast has to search. Outposts, close to the middle, give double gold.
- **Mine gold** at the back of your enclosure, and hire villagers to mine for you.
- **Build your door** at the register before the Beast wakes up, then upgrade it through 10 levels and repair it with your gold. It is the only thing that can break.
- **Stay quiet.** The Beast sees badly, but it feels noise: mining, building and running lead it to you. Walking or sneaking keeps you quiet.
- **Arm yourself.** From door level 3, buy an underground mine, dig your own ore and craft armor that acts as a shield, swords and crossbows.
- **Fortify.** Build a courtyard with towers for archers and frost shooters, golems that defend, attack or destroy nests, an alarm bell and landmines.

## Playing as the Beast

- **Follow the noise.** A blue wave flies to you from every builder who mines, builds or runs. Most enclosures are empty: find the right ones.
- **Earn gold by hitting doors**, then spend it at your lair, the bone cage in the middle of the map, on Claws, Fangs, Hide and Legs.
- **Evolve through 10 stages**, from night blue to blazing white. You grow and gain spikes, blades, horns, a tail and a crown.
- **Unlock four powers** with echo shards: Flair, Roar, Charge and Sonic Boom.
- **Lay nests.** The hits you take give you blood. Spend it on nests of zombies, spiders, skeletons and ravagers, your own offspring, who go and hit the door of the weakest or the strongest builder.

Default keys: **R** lair and shop, **K** lay a nest, **J** what your monsters aim at, **B V H N** your powers, **F5** to see yourself.

## After death

A dead builder makes one final choice:

- **Spirit**: fly through everything, reveal the Beast, send it back to its lair, repair doors, and haunt an archer to make it shoot twice as fast.
- **Mini Beast**: join the Beast and drive a small Warden that hits doors and bites. It comes back when it dies.

## Four maps

Cursed Forest, Desert, Ice Floe and Volcano, each in three sizes (8, 12 or 20 enclosures) depending on the number of builders.

## Multiplayer

- Works on dedicated servers. **Every player needs the mod.**
- Start a new world or a new server: players land in the hub when they join.
- The server's settings are sent to every player who joins (`config/buildersvsbeast-synced.toml`).
- Admin commands: `/bvb start`, `/bvb stop`, and `/bvb test` to try the Beast alone.
- In English and French.