01 Leadership
You decide, or they vote
A thief, a bite, a stranger at the gate: each call is yours or the group's. Deciding builds Authority; a vote builds Trust, and you live with the result. People remember who overruled them.
Now open · A survival leadership game
The dead are the easy part. Leading the living is the game.
You find an abandoned camp and a handful of strangers. You agree the rules around the fire, send people out on routes you drew yourself, and act on what they saw, heard or reported. Nobody out of reach can tell you what is happening.
Nothing to installRuns in a desktop browserKeyboard and mouse
Around the fire · 9 people
Workshop
7articles in the founding charter, put to a vote or decreed
9kinds of mission, each with a route, a team, gear and rules
110–200of the dead in a migrating herd, plus 4 for every day survived
43jobs from before the outbreak, woven into every survivor's life story
01 What makes it different
Not a shooter. A command post with a campfire.
Holdout is played from above, in real time you can pause. You can fight, but most of what decides a run happens in a meeting, on a map, or in the minutes you spend waiting for someone to come home.
02 Knowledge
No news without contact
The maps show what your people know, not the world. Every marker says how you know it and how old the news is. Out of radio range, you hear nothing until they walk back in.
03 Missions
Plan it, send them, wait
Draw the route, pick the team, hand out gear and rules. They really walk it, search real crates and fight the real dead. When they are back, the debrief tells you what happened.
04 The camp
Goals the group organises around
Set each camp's goals in order. The camp moves people to the jobs those goals need, tells you what stands in the way, and proposes goals of its own.
05 The dead
Just people who died
No special infected. Most doze on their feet by day. Herds of a hundred or more cross the valley; you track them from sightings and sounds, go quiet, or turn them aside.
06 People
Everyone has a before
Life stories with a job, a hometown and family. Secrets that slip out in hints. Friendships and rivalries that change how people work. A bitten hand you can cut away, if you act within the hour.
02 A living world, seen second-hand
You only know what someone saw.
Nobody is marked on the map until one of your people finds out about them. Someone out alone tells you when they're back. A herd you only heard is a circle of doubt with no heading. Two walkie-talkies keep you in touch; without them, the camp's deputy decides for you and you get the brief when you return.
No radio: a guess, not a dot
Their target
- BroadcastRidge Relay:
Heard a herd moving through the lowlands last night. Sounded like rain on a roof.
- Top barLast seen: herd ~150 · 170 m NW of camp → SE · heard 50 min ago
- Big mapScouts → a spot near Halvorsen Research Lab:
expected around here now?
- Mission plannerNo radio: no news until they are back or you find them.
- SeenBy their own eyes, blocked by hills, trees and your walls.
- HeardA direction and a rough distance. Two hearings give a heading.
- RadioWalkie-talkies reach 300 m from camp, or anywhere with a Radio Station.
- ReportedScouts and mission teams bring it home, on foot.
03 Around the fire, Day 1
Agree the rules, or impose them.
When you claim your first camp, everyone gathers to agree how it will live. Every face shows whether that person would sign as the charter stands, judged from what you know about them. Hidden traits can still surprise you in a real vote.
- Property
- Shared stash, finders keep a share, or the leader hands out
- Rations
- Equal shares, workers first, or the weak first
- Justice
- Exile, work it off, group decides, second chance
- The bitten
- Quarantine, mercy, or keep working and hope
- Night watch
- One, two or three extra guards
- Curfew · Decisions
- Who stays out after dark, and who makes the big calls
Put it to a vote
Needs more than half. If it passes, +6 Trust. If it fails, the no-voters say what they dislike.
Decree it
Always passes. Costs 3–10 Trust, gains 8 Authority, and those who didn't want it remember.
Later, unhappy people petition to change a law, and you grant it, put it to a vote, postpone it or veto it; three vetoes within ten days bring a leadership challenge. Leave a camp and its deputy decides in your place, by their own character, but never exiles or executes anyone.
04 Out of the walls
Draw the route. Then let them go.
Scout a place or a route, scavenge, clear, rescue, trade, recruit, run supplies to another camp. The amber line is the way they will really walk, round rivers by the fords and bridges. The planner estimates time and risk from your map, not from the truth.
Waypoint 1
Target: 38% unseen ground
- What & whereClick the map to set the target, add waypoints, drag them.
- WhoPick faces, or let it suggest a team that gets on.
- GearWeapons, armour and packs from that camp's stash; food, water, a walkie.
- RulesStealth or aggressive, loot detours, when to turn back, back by when.
- DebriefThe route they walked, what they brought back, what they found.
Scouts per sector
Someone responsible for every approach
Draw a loop or a road for a scout or a pair, set a schedule, and give them rules: avoid fights, sneak, come back with herd news. They report herds, people on the move, groups of the dead and unsearched crates, and only once they are home or on the radio.
05 How a day plays · 12 real minutes at 1×
The clock runs whether you're ready or not.
Pause whenever you need to think; speed up when the walls are holding. A game hour takes 30 real seconds at normal speed.
- Dawn
Night ends. The watch comes off the walls and the game autosaves.
- Scouts out
Dawn rounds start. Workers head for the jobs your goals need.
- Out there
Missions on the road, supply runs between camps, a stranger at the gate.
- Secrets
A hint may surface: the count on the tins is off again.
- Dusk warning
Two hours of light. Haul the last wood home.
- Crews come in
Woodcutters and scavengers walk back to the fire.
- The dead come
In waves, more each night. Every shot calls more.
- Midnight meal
Each camp feeds its own people from its own food.
Day 2 · 20:00 The first real horde. Close the perimeter by then, or they walk straight in.
06 The systems
Everything you'd have to think about.
Each pressure comes with a way to answer it, found somewhere in the world. The field manual has every number.
Goals & the planner
- Close the perimeter, beds for everyone, keep two days of food and water, clear the bodies.
- Materials go to goals in order; a lower goal never spends what a higher one waits for.
- Pin anyone whose job you set yourself; the planner leaves them be.
Several camps
- Each camp has its own stock, stash, workshop queue and deputy.
- Nothing moves by magic: goods travel on someone's back, by supply run.
- An outpost without food goes hungry, even if the main camp is full.
The dead & the herds
- No special infected: some big, some fresh, some missing their legs. Some still wear packs you can search.
- They smell you downwind, and the bodies you leave by the gate draw more.
- Herds show as you know them: last spot, heading and age, never where they'll go.
Life stories & chemistry
- A job before, a hometown on this map, family dead, missing or here with you.
- Secrets: a painkiller habit, an old bite that never turned, a ring kept from a divorce.
- Friends work better side by side; rivals on one job get worse.
Bodies that break
- Bites land where people throw up their hands: a hand, a forearm, a leg.
- Amputate within the hour and it stops the infection about 85% of the time.
- One hand means no rifles; one leg means no running. The group lives with it.
A world that fights back
- Rivers with fords and bridges, lakes, mountains, marsh and a slide into winter.
- Thirst, fatigue, fever and fractures; ammo by calibre; food that spoils.
- Raiders, traders, factions, and a different truth behind the outbreak every game.
07 Plates from the field
Captured in the current build.
Every image on this page is a capture from the game as it is now, in the browser. Select a plate to enlarge it.
Now open · Early access
The camp is north of the road. Go find it.
Holdout is in early access. It runs right here in your browser, with nothing to install. Saves stay in your browser, with an autosave every dawn.
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