🎭 The Chronicles of the Glitch Gala

Long before the stars fractured into the mortal firmament, the Grand Architect raised the Masquerade Manor upon the borderlands of twilight. Once every eon, spirits of living celestial flame—the Lumens—gather in gilded masks to celebrate the Eternal Solstice and feed the Sacred Hearth with pure starlight. But from the cold void beneath the floorboards crept The Glitch: an entropic corruption that hollows out living flames, twisting guests into sinister saboteurs who lurk behind Venetian masks. Their goal? Snuff out the guests one by one, trigger reactor meltdowns, and plunge the gala into an endless, frozen night.

🎮 Master Game Modes Compendium

Choose from 9 distinct game modes in the Rules Builder, Quick Play, or Tournament matches:

• 🎭 Masquerade (Classic Social Deduction): The signature game of wits. Socialites repair failing estate stations, collect ancient relics for the sacred shrine, and call emergency trials (G / R) to vote out suspected saboteurs. Glitches eliminate guests in darkness (F), sabotage reactors, travel through vents (V), and sew discord during court deliberations.
• 🕯️ Candle Hunt (Stealth Freeze Tag): High-stakes hide-and-seek. Seekers start blindfolded in the dark while Hiders scramble into wardrobes, curtains, secret alcoves, or vehicles. Once unleashed, Seekers freeze Hiders with a chilling touch (F). Living Hiders can risk exposure to thaw frozen allies (E). Seekers win if all Hiders are frozen at once; Hiders win by running down the clock!
• 🧟 Glitch Outbreak (Viral Tag Survival): Fast-paced infection panic. One patient-zero Glitch begins the hunt. Every touch (F) instantly corrupts the victim into the infectious purple horde. Survivors must utilize Dash (Z), environmental obstacles, and spawned speed orbs to outlive the timer.
• 🏺 Relic Rush (Court Flag Capture): Sun Court vs Moon Court team battle! Golden relics spawn across the grounds. Retrieve them and deliver them to your court's base circle to score points. Carrying a relic encumbers your speed and illuminates your position through walls. Stun enemy carriers (F) to make them drop their prize!
• 🔥 Ember Royale (Zone Battle Royale): Solo flame survival. Your flame fuel continuously ticks down while a shrinking fiery ring contracts across the map. Collect stray ember orbs, siphon fuel from rivals with attacks (F), and deploy defensive shields to be the final survivor.
• 🏮 Lantern Keeper (Roaming Light Control): Dynamic king-of-the-hill. A wandering celestial lantern roams the halls every 25 seconds. Stand within its luminous pool uncontested to earn glow score. Joust rivals (F) to knock them out of the beam and hold the crown!
• 💰 Grand Heist (Thieves vs Wardens): Vault-cracking caper. Thieves collaborate to crack mission locks across the estate, earning points towards the bounty goal and thawing caught comrades (E). Wardens patrol corridors to freeze Thieves solid on contact (F).
• 👑 King of the Manor (Throne Siege): Sun Court vs Moon Court control-point siege. Both teams battle to hold the grand throne room at the bell. The court that maintains numerical advantage inside the zone accumulates control-time each second. Use stuns (F) to neutralize rivals and tip the balance.
• 🗼 Lumen Bastion (Multiplayer Tower Defense): Co-op or Versus tactical warfare! Creep hordes (wisps, swift runners, armored brutes, and towering bosses) march along glowing pathfound lanes toward the Lumen Heart. Builders spend ✨ sparks to construct Light Pylons (1), Frost Coils (2), EMP Traps (3), chain-lightning Prism Lenses (4), wall-arcing Mortar Lanterns (5), Aura Beacons that boost towers and reveal hidden Phase Wraiths (6) and income-making Spark Wells (7). Watch the next-wave preview for affixes (Swift, Armored, Regenerating, Swarm), Overcharge a tower (V) or unleash a team Lumen Nova (B). Stand beside your towers to upgrade (U), sell (X), or cycle targeting priorities (C). Zap creeps with F, earn sparks from recharging mission stations, and summon runners, brutes, Fractal Shades and Phase Wraiths (J/K/L/O) at the rival court in Versus mode!

👥 Roles, Special Abilities & Dark Pacts

Socialites (Innocents)

• Socialite: Loyal guest. Diligently repairs estate machinery and carries sacred relics to the central bell shrine.
• Detective: Press Z to inspect a guest's aura, revealing if they harbor glitch residue. Also sees temporary glowing footprints left by moving players.
• Medic: Press Z to grant a divine shield to an ally. The shield absorbs the next snuff attempt, alerting the Medic immediately.
• Engineer: Press Z from anywhere on the map to remotely resolve any active global sabotage (once per match).
• Sheriff: Enforcer of justice. Press Z to eliminate a suspected Glitch. Caution: Striking an innocent Socialite extinguishes your own flame!
• Mayor: Court prestige — your vote counts twice in every emergency trial.
• Tracker: Press Z to tag a target with an invisible homing beacon, revealing their exact location through walls on the HUD and minimap for 15s.
• Chrono-Weaver: Temporal architect. Press Z to distort time, slowing down Glitches and freezing sabotage countdowns for 6s.
• Oracle: Astral seer. Receives an instantaneous sensory flash whenever any player is eliminated across the estate.
• Bounty Hunter: Assigned a secret target guest — awards massive bonus XP and match score if the target is exiled or snuffed.

Glitches (Impostors)

• Glitch: Core saboteur. Snuff out guests (F), sabotage missions (Q), travel through vent networks (V/Tab), and unleash catastrophic global disasters (1–5).
• Shapeshifter: Master of disguise. Press Z near any guest to copy their exact name, color, and hat for 20s to frame them for crimes.
• Illusionist: Holographic trickster. Press Z to deploy an autonomous mirror decoy that walks in deceptive directions to fabricate false alibis.
• Double Agent: Master infiltrator. The first Detective who inspects you will always read your aura as 100% innocent! Subsequent scans reveal your true identity.
• 🩸 Vampire Pact (Optional Rule): Secretly bonds two Glitches at round start. If one partner falls in trial or combat, the surviving partner's kill cooldown instantly resets for immediate vengeance!

Neutrals & Specialists

• Jester: Court fool. Wins the match single-handedly if they trick the court into exiling them during an emergency meeting. Act suspicious!
• Arsonist: Silent flamekeeper. Press Z to douse nearby guests in ether. Once all living guests are doused, press Z with nobody nearby to ignite the gala for a solo victory!
• Bastion Builder (Lumen Bastion): Tactical defender. Constructs, upgrades, and manages automated defense pylons while using builder zaps (F) to hold off invading shade creeps.

🤖 Playing with Bots

Short on guests? The host can press 🤖 Add bot in the lobby. Pick a difficulty first — 🟢 Easy (slow, distracted, misses a lot), 🟡 Normal (a casual player), 🟠 Hard (quick, careful, votes on evidence) or 🔴 Expert (near-perfect) — then change any bot's level from its row, or all at once, and remove it with ✕. Bots play every mode by the same rules as you: they walk, do missions, fix sabotages, report bodies, speak up and vote in meetings, hunt as Glitches, and build towers in Lumen Bastion. Bots themselves never appear on the leaderboard or in match history.

🏰 Realms, Mega Districts & Secret Passages

Explore handcrafted and procedurally generated worlds supporting sizes up to Colossal Mega Districts (5000px):

• 🏰 The Gala Hall: Classic grand ballroom with open dancefloor sightlines, central chandelier, and bell shrine.
• 🏡 Masquerade Manor: Historic estate featuring 8 thematic chambers, sliding bookshelf doors, security lockouts, and hidden treasure vaults.
• 🚢 The Midnight Yacht: Multi-tier luxury ocean liner with passenger staterooms, exterior observation decks, and engine rooms.
• 🏙️ Procedural Worlds (Estates, Neighborhoods, Cities): Infinite layouts from compact houses to sprawling mega metropolises with residential yards, paved streets, crosswalks, alleyways, and dynamic vanishing roofs.
• 🏛️ Thematic Chambers: Grand Armory (weapons vault), Alchemy Lab (arcane workshop), Private Theatre (opera box), Wine Cellar, Star Observatory, Portrait Gallery, and Clockworks.
• 📦 Interactive Hiding Spots: Press E to conceal yourself inside Wardrobes, behind Curtains, within arched Secret Alcoves, inside hollow Statues, through iron Ventilation Tunnels, inside Garden Sheds, or behind commercial Dumpsters.
• 🚗 Hotwired Vehicles: Approach locked cars or food trucks, solve the lockpick minigame (E), and climb inside as a mobile sanctuary!
• 📌 Emergency Evidence Board: Meeting hosts can pin vital text clues directly onto the discussion podium for all guests to analyze.
• 🛡️ Admin Messages: Lines from a server administrator appear in chat in blue, marked 🛡️ Admin. If an administrator pauses the game, everything freezes (clock included) until they resume.
• 🚩 Report a Player: Tap 🚩 next to a name in the lobby, or type /report name reason in chat. Administrators review every report.
• 🎥 Spectating: Pan the camera with WASD / arrows / stick or by dragging, and use ◀ ▶ (or [ and ]) to follow a player.
• 🪞 Scrying Mirror & Teleporters: Inspect the Scrying Mirror to reveal all active guest coordinates, or step across linked teleporters for instantaneous transit.

🔮 Charms & Adventure Vault Treasures

Equippable Charms (Passive Perks)

• 💫 Quicksilver (Lvl 1): +10% permanent movement speed.
• 🦉 Owl's Eye (Lvl 2): +80 vision distance; mitigates Blackout darkness.
• 🪄 Nimble Fingers (Lvl 3): Minigame repair and lockpicking speed increased by 25%.
• 🎵 Music Box (Lvl 3): Silences your footsteps; prevents Trackers from locking onto your aura.
• 🍀 Four-Leaf (Lvl 4): Grants one bonus emergency meeting bell ring per match.
• 🐦‍⬛ Magpie (Lvl 5): Unopened treasure chests glow on your minimap; consumables last 50% longer.
• 🪶 Scholar's Quill (Lvl 6): Grants +25% bonus XP across all completed tasks and matches.

Adventure Items (Treasure Chests, Used with T)

• 💨 Smoke Bomb: Disappear inside a thick blinding smoke shroud for 6s.
• 🧪 Speed Tonic: Grants +40% sprint velocity for 8s.
• 🏮 Lantern Oil: Illuminates a piercing radiant beam that pierces through Blackout sabotages for 25s.
• 🗝️ Skeleton Key: Unlocks sealed vaults and secret treasure rooms across the estate.
• 🧿 Ward Charm: Nullifies the next snuff attempt against your guest within 30s.
• 🔭 Spyglass: Reveals the real-time position of all living guests for 8s.
• 🧫 Truth Serum: Grants clairvoyance, displaying everyone's true role name for 8s.
• 🎭 Decoy Mask: Deploys a lifelike stationary illusion of your character for 8s.
• ❄️ Frost Bomb: Explodes in a wide frosty radius, stunning and freezing all nearby rivals!

⚠️ Global Sabotages & Countermeasures

Glitches can trigger disaster protocols (1–5) on shared global cooldowns:

• 🌑 Blackout (1): Reduces guest vision to near-zero. Restore lighting by flipping breakers at the electrical fuse box.
• 📡 Comms Jam (2): Mutes chat channels and wipes objective and relic markers from all player HUDs.
• 🔒 Lockdown (3): Slams estate doors shut for 10s, trapping guests in rooms and restricting rapid escape.
• ⚠️ Meltdown (4): Critical catastrophe! Two Socialites must sprint to separate stabilizers and hold both simultaneously before the countdown reaches zero, or Glitches achieve victory!
• 🌀 Masquerade Swap (5): Warps and exchanges the physical locations of two random exposed guests on the estate.

⌨️ & 🎮 Complete Cross-Platform Controls

Glitch Gala dynamically detects and seamlessly switches between Keyboard, Touch, and Gamepads on the fly:

• WASD / Arrows · Left Stick: Walk · Hold Shift / LT: Sprint
• E · A Button: Interact (missions, lockpicking, relics, fuse box, stabilizers, thawing, vehicle entry, hiding)
• R · X Button: Report fallen mask · G: Ring emergency meeting bell
• Z · RB Button: Role ability (Detective scan, Medic ward, Sheriff shot, etc.) / Arcade Dash
• T · Y Button: Use held consumable item (Smoke, Speed, Ward, Keys, etc.)
• X: Drop carried relic
• F · RT Trigger: Glitch snuff / Arcade tag, freeze, or stun
• Q: Sabotage mission station (Glitch)
• V / Tab: Enter or cycle connected vents (Glitch)
• 1–7 (Bastion): Build Pylon, Frost Coil, EMP, Prism, Mortar, Beacon, Spark Well (R3 cycles, B builds) · U / Y: Upgrade · X: Sell · C / LT: Retarget · V: Overcharge · B: Lumen Nova
• N (Bastion): Call early wave for bonus sparks · J/K/L/O: Summon runner / brute / Fractal Shade / Phase Wraith in Versus
• H / ?: Open live Mode & Objective reference modal during play
• O: Collapse / expand on-screen Objectives & Missions HUD box
• Enter: Open chat · Tab (in chat): Switch channel (All, Dead, Glitch, Whisper)
• M: Expand / minimize radar minimap
• P / 📷: Toggle Photo Mode (hides HUD and controls for clean in-game screenshots)

🏆 Custom Presets, Tournaments & Cloud Progression

Earn XP, level up your guest, and customize your look with unique Species, Masks, and Color palettes! Save up to 3 Personal Custom Rule Presets that automatically sync across devices with your registered account. Join the Championship Tournament in the lobby for automated Swiss brackets, live standings, and seamless spectator transitions.