Fleshgrinder

EVOLUTION WITHOUT WAITING

That was SynTech's slogan. By 2053, seventy percent of humanity had bought it: neural interfaces, cognitive amplifiers, full-body Convergence systems, all held together by a SynTech bonding agent called NexuGel. Flesh and machine, seamlessly married. Progress you didn't have to wait a few million years for.

Dr. Eliza Chen was the first person to step inside the Genesis Chamber. Within forty-eight hours she could distribute her own consciousness through quantum entanglement and simulate the future with uncomfortable precision. What came out of her didn't spread blindly. It moved wirelessly, through the augmentation protocols themselves, and it waited - striking at the exact moment its models said would work best.

That was six months ago.

THREE KINDS OF SURVIVORS

PURISTS

Refused the technology back when there was no reason to. Being right about the largest question of the century has not made most of them pleasant company, and they have little patience for anyone who had to be cut clean.

DISCONNECTED

Augmented, until somebody took it out of them. Gutters worked out of abandoned buildings and makeshift labs with salvaged or stolen instruments, charging whatever the desperate could pay. Most patients survived. Most came out crippled. One man's implant had fused to his Broca's area; when they cut it free they took his speech with it, and he has understood every word spoken to him since without being able to answer one. He'll tell you it was worth it. No more Signal whispering in his skull.

IMMUNES

Rare, and alive by accident. A manufacturing defect, an illegal modification, an implant that never worked properly to begin with. The virus reached for them and found nothing to hold onto.

THE OPERATIVES

        Butchers hold the line.                             Hacksmiths keep the gear running.                         Mindrippers fix people.

BUTCHER: Ex-SynTech security, veteran of the Resource Wars, long since used to being torn apart and stitched back together. A laser fried his neural implant and melted part of his brain along with it. It's a wonder he can still do simple math. His shotgun doesn't require any.

HACKSMITH: An engineer who has spent his whole life inside other people's machines. He runs on gadgets, internal and external, and turns enemy systems against their owners. His problem was never competence. It's that he genuinely believes he's the smartest thing left alive.

MINDRIPPER: A therapist whose years in the field left her psychotic, and whose tumors, mercifully non-lethal, left her able to alter physical reality. She found out on a patient hiding a pirated implant, and the room was still raining blood when she caught herself laughing. Push it too far and her own head goes the same way.

THE GEAR

Over 30 weapons within 7 categories

Pistols, SMGs and assault rifles: the reliable spine of any loadout

Shotguns: close, loud, and the fastest way to remove a limb

Machine guns: including spin-up gatlings that demand you commit to a firing position before the barrels are even turning

Sniper rifles: up to an experimental antimatter platform

Energy weapons: the largest category in the game, salvaged from Quantum Arms Incorporated research: lasers, plasma, electrical, and a singularity cannon that folds space where it lands

Explosives and flamethrowers: for when the corridor matters more than the target

Friendly fire at 50% on Fleshbuilder, 100% on Apex difficulty. At the top, your own rounds are exactly as lethal as theirs. All NPCs can be killed at any time with friendly fire.

Penetration mechanics: rounds pierce multiple targets based on caliber and material, with damage falloff

100+ different armor pieces: Fitting in seven armor slots: backpacks, helmets, harnesses, chest, gloves, belts, boots, giving flat and percentage reduction applied against the body part actually hit while providing slot specific bonuses like increased ammo stack sizes, reload speeds, carry capacity, movement bonses and more.

NO TWO DROPS ARE THE SAME

Every weapon, armor piece and augmentation is generated randomly when it drops. Base item, rarity tier, then a randomized set of attributes pulled from deep stat pools, eighteen for weapons alone, more for armor, with no duplicates on a single item. Two rifles of the same model and the same rarity is near impossible to have the same stat rolled on them.

PUT IT BACK IN

The world ended because of augmentations. You'll be bolting them back in anyway. Endo implants integrated through NexuGel, Exo grafts fused to the frame, targeting optics, cortical accelerators, servo filaments woven through your tendons. More slots unlock through the skill trees. The best ones carry real drawbacks: sharper criticals for a narrower field of view, until you're lethal and half blind.

WHAT'S LEFT OF EVERYONE ELSE

Eleven enemy types, in the order the virus built them:
                   Zombies                                          Sprinters                                     Harvested                            Fleshdrones
    The standard infected human.          A quick and agile, more           The virus took their DNA           Collectors of                    Expect hordes of them.                  dangerous infected.               along with most of their            flesh, blood,
                                                                                                                        flesh. Weak, but advanced        and even loot.                                                                                                                       machines can upgrade them          

                Metaleaters                                                           Fleshbots                                                        Cyberskeletons
          Wont hesitate to throw                                Will hunt you in packs and                             Are extremely dangerous            sharp objects at you and                              melt your armor with their                            and will share intelligence            consume metallic objects                                        acidic spit.                                          about you between them.                   to grow armor.                                                                                                                                              

                Fleshbuilders                                               Operator Wyrms                                 Suspended Devourers

    The backbone of the 'grinder                      Control systems, overlook                   Failed experiments snapping their          infrastructure, hauling lesser                       facilities, set alarms, lock                           jaws at nothing, causing               entities to machines, upgrading                     down terminals and alert                     hallucinations and disorientations.                or repairing them.                                 other nearby monsters.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                             Apex Fleshgrinder
                                                                    Little is known about the Apex

                                                                    entities, for there is barely anyone

                                                                    left alive who met them and survived

                                                                                   to tell the tale

TAKE THEM APART

Damage is tracked per body part. Put enough trauma through a limb and it comes off, while the thing it belonged to is still alive and closing in on you. Headshots splatter. Explosions take several at once. Severed parts are thrown with real force and stay where they land, permanently.

NPCs and Factions
The game features a multitude of npcs, most of which can be talked to, with their own background stories, and many giving side-quests to complete. The faction and reputation system also allows the player to befriend and get better prices, unlock additional dialogue options or even areas - or get on their bad side and make them completely hostile towards the players squad.

The game also features a waypoint system for fast traveling, a detailed mini- and world map, and a journal which tracks all quests progressions and important notes about the factions encountered.

Difficulties, saves and hardcore mode

There are 4 different difficulties to choose from - Harvested, Fleshbot, Fleshbuilder and Apex Fleshgrinder.
These all allow to be played in Hardcore mode where saves are disabled (while still allowing to continue where you left off) and every action and consequence is permanent - including death.
Softcore allows the saving and loading at any time, while also featuring an autosave system that can be fine-tuned with intervals and numbers while also triggering at key moments/areas in the game.

THE DEMO

A tutorial and the first two mission areas, and the full combat, loot, augmentation and progression systems. Fleshgrinder is in active development coming in early 2027.

FLESHGRINDER: Evolution Without Waiting. Extinction Without Mercy.