Each turn, the lava moves one row. So does the city.
A tactical RPG played on a black glass sand table. Field Marshal Tove Raan has seven sectors to empty and one protocol she no longer trusts.
- Early reveal
- PC
- PlayStation 5
- Xbox Series X|S
The Table
Anvil Reach sits on the south face of Mount Carrow, close enough to the vent that the kilns in the lower town never go cold. The Evacuation Office keeps one object for the night the mountain wakes: a sand table cut from black obsidian, the whole slope etched into it in silver, one glass piece for every crew.
Field Marshal Tove Raan has rehearsed on that table for eleven years. Tonight she opens the backup protocol to check a single lane and finds a line she never wrote. District Seven, Low Kiln, is marked unassigned. The plan gives it no crew and no lane. Four thousand people, written off in one line.
Tove Raan, 44. Field marshal of the Evacuation Office. Holds the tablet flat against her chest when she is thinking, and she has been thinking since nine o'clock.
Each turn, the lava moves one row.
Move a crew and it moves. Hold a crew and it moves anyway.
Juno learned it on a drill night in Kiln Row. She stopped to help an old man lift a handcart over a curb. Two turns, maybe three. When she looked up, the amber lamp in the row behind her was on, and the row she had been standing in was gone from the table.
On the real slope that row is a street. In OBSIDGRID every order you give has a second half: by the end of the turn, the row behind your crews has to be empty, because the mountain is about to take it.
Turn one Turn two Turn three
Seven Sectors
Seven sectors stand between the vent and the sea, and the protocol empties them in a fixed order. Tove moves them through the grid one at a time, square by square, on a clock the mountain sets.
Each sector plays as its own table, with its own streets and its own way to go wrong. The Glassworks has furnaces someone must bank before leaving. Ferry Steps has three boats and one stair.
Director Silas Orme wrote the backup, and he wrote it carefully. The council towers hold the hospital records, the seed vault, and the only radio mast that reaches the coast.
Swap Low Kiln for the towers, he tells Tove, and the region stands again in ten years instead of forty. He lays his figures on the glass the way a man unfolds a map you cannot argue with.
Silas Orme, 62. Chair of the city council. Nobody in the Office has heard him raise his voice.
- Vent TerracesRight under the crater. The first row the lava takes.
- Kiln RowNarrow lanes, handcarts, and the Office's own drill streets.
- The GlassworksFurnaces that cannot be left burning. Someone stays to bank them.
- Council TowersRecords, the seed vault, the radio mast. Orme's first call.
- Orchard CutOne road through the terraces, wide enough for two crews.
- Ferry StepsThree ferries and a long stair down to black water.
- Low KilnUnassigned.
Hold the Line
Three crews, a six by six grid, and a lava front at the rim. Each turn, give every crew one order: step to a cell beside it, or hold. Once all three have orders, the lava takes the next row, and anyone still standing in it is lost. Get your crews to the two safe lanes at the bottom.
Click a crew, then an outlined cell next to it.
Keyboard: arrow keys to move around the grid, Enter to pick a crew or a cell, H to hold, Esc to cancel.
- Lava
- Safe lane
- Blocked
- Crew lost
Turn 1
Lava at the rim
See one clean run in three boards
Zero Hour
Six sectors are out. One district is left and no lane on the table reaches it. The protocol says Low Kiln waits.
Tove deletes the protocol and opens every lane at once. Crews cross crews on streets nobody rehearsed. The radios go to static, so Juno carries orders between them on foot. Up on the council stair, Orme watches his towers empty in the wrong order.
Some of Low Kiln gets out. Some of it stays on the slope, and Tove has to read both numbers.
Follow the Reveal
Leave an email and we will send the next look when it is ready: the Glassworks sector, played from the first turn to the last.
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The Plates
Every table in the Office has four plates screwed to its edge. These are ours. Open one to read it in full.
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What we collect when you follow the reveal, why, and how to make us delete it.
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The rules for using this site and the reveal emails.
EULA
The licence that will come with the game and any playtest build.
Help
Contact, accessibility on this site, and the Hold the Line controls.