FAQ for

As you read, please bear in mind that:

• the game is in early pre-alpha,
• I am a solo developer with limited time, and
• plans can and do change!

I last reviewed this page for accuracy on 2025-12-29.

Getting the Game

When will Signs of Danger be released?

When I am happy with it and playtesters love it. I am a solo dev so I will take my time.

You can wishlist Signs of Danger on Steam here, so that you get an email when it releases.

Can I playtest Signs of Danger?

Yes, by joining my Slow Rush Discord server or by signing up to my newsletter:

Is there a demo for Signs of Danger?

Not yet. A proper downloadable demo is planned for 2026.

However some devlogs do have a playable web build (see relevant FAQ entry) that you can mess around with.

Does Signs of Danger support Linux?

Yes, Signs of Danger has a native Linux build already.

Exact distro support is to be determined but I develop the game on Linux most of the time.

Does Signs of Danger run on Steam Deck?

Yes, Signs of Danger runs on Steam Deck as a native Linux game.

Performance needs some work still, but have faith: I play games on my own Steam Deck a lot.

Does Signs of Danger support MacOS?

Not yet, but I plan to add Mac support to Signs of Danger before release. (In theory it should "just work" but I don't currently own a Mac to test with.)

Will Signs of Danger be released on Switch or Xbox or Playstation?

I would like to, but currently Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have rules that more or less disallow running Rust code on their consoles, which is a problem since this game's custom engine is written in Rust.

If Rust becomes permitted on consoles then I will investigate how technically viable it is for me to port :)

Will Signs of Danger be released for Android or iOS?

Probably not. I don't play games on mobile so someone would have to offer me a lot of money.

Gameplay

What genre is Signs of Danger?

• Roguelite - you collect upgrades to become more powerful and fight through enemies in a run until you extract or fail (see next question)
• Co-Op - you're playing with other players, not against them. (There is light friendly fire though.)
• Platforming-lite - no precision jumping required, but you do need to contend with gravity.

What were your inspirations when making Signs of Danger?

• Noita's physics, obviously
• Risk of Rain and Crab Champions for the gameplay loop
• Helldivers 1 and Broforce for the pacing and chaos
• And, even though this is a PvE roguelite game, some childhood PvP games still inspired me: Soldat, Worms, Cortex Command, Jetmen Revival, etc

What is the core gameplay loop of Signs of Danger?

Under construction! The goal is fast-paced PvE roguelite action with regular thinking breaks:

• fight through successive levels in 1-3 mins and complete the level objective (reach the end, survive a wave, destroy a base, etc - most objectives not implemented yet).
• find or buy upgrades for your guns and abilities as you go (as is traditional in modern roguelikes/roguelites).
  • also get some amount of respawns each run to offset deaths from chaotic physics (I hate waiting for my friends to die so I can play again).
• if you make it to the end of the run, you can use the collected resources to upgrade for future runs (not implemented yet).
  • or choose to 'loop' - keep your upgrades and fight more on higher difficulty (not implemented yet).

But again, plans can change!

What does "every pixel is individually simulated" mean in Signs of Danger?

Every pixel of terrain, liquid or gas in each level has its own behaviors and reacts with other neighbouring pixels.

For example, oil will float on water and be set on fire by explosions, burning wood bridges will be destroyed and collapse, snow melts into water which conducts electricity and will be turned into steam by fire, acid eats terrain to create flammable gas - etc.

The underlying technology is homegrown in a custom engine, but broadly similar to that of Noita or PowderToy.

How does gun customization and ability crafting work in Signs of Danger?

Not entirely figured out yet! Currently the system is somewhat similar to Noita's wandcrafting, but I plan to overhaul it to make it more flexible and more approachable - without sacrificing depth. My two goals currently are:

• your dash, melee, drone(s), etc abilities can all be upgraded just like your guns.
• make it "easy to be awesome, hard to survive your own awesomeness".

Are there keyboard or gamepad controls for Signs of Danger?

Each local player can use one of:

• Keyboard and mouse
• Keyboard without mouse
• Gamepad controller (I test with Xbox controllers but almost any controller should work)

Can I remap controls in Signs of Danger?

Yes, you will be able to rebind all in-game controls on both keyboard and gamepad controllers. Not sure about in-menu-navigation controls yet.

Is there an expansive almost-infinite open 2D world in Signs of Danger?

Not currently! This is a fast-paced multiplayer game so I want players to stay close together for maximum chaos - and smaller separate levels works well for that.

Moving from level to level also helps counterbalance the fact that it's pretty easy to destroy the world :)

Are the levels handcrafted or procedurally generated in Signs of Danger?

Currently they are handcrafted because that was easy, but I would like to explore procedurally generating them.

How much RNG is in Signs of Danger?

Approximately the same as Risk of Rain, or Noita if it had handmade levels.

Will Signs of Danger have achievements?

Yes.

How many hours of gameplay does Signs of Danger have?

To be determined.

As a solo dev I don't expect to hit Noita's thousands of hours, but I'm aiming for at least 50 hours before running out of new things to see.

Will Signs of Danger have secrets?

You will have to wait and see :)

Will Signs of Danger support for modding?

Hopefully! Right now there's support for data tables like physics materials, ability stats, etc to be sourced from config files to tweak stats or add new ones, and of course sprites are swappable too.

Scripting is not currently implemented because the combination of "needs to be fast" and "needs determinism for network multiplayer" and "can work on the web" is tricky - the programming languages that support all three of those things are not scripting languages! But, since the final game won't ship on the web, I expect I'll eventually bite the bullet and integrate a scripting language of some kind, which mods should then also be able to use.

Steam Workshop support would be nice but I haven't looked into exactly what it entails yet.

Multiplayer

Can I play solo in Signs of Danger?

Yes. A core goal is that the game should be fun in singleplayer too. I want to have fun when I put in hundreds of hours playtesting!

Is Signs of Danger a Co-Op or versus game?

Co-Op "player-vs-enemies-vs-environment" is the primary game-mode of Signs of Danger. I'm not ruling out a Player-vs-Player arena sub-mode (or similar), but Co-Op is the primary focus right now.

Is there online multiplayer in Signs of Danger?

Yes, there will be invite-a-friend cooperative online multiplayer in Signs of Danger. This already roughly works today, but needs a lot more polish (Steam integration etc).

Is there couch co-op (local multiplayer) in Signs of Danger?

Yes, you can play Signs of Danger with 1-4 players locally, including a mix of online & local players.

Currently local players need to stay near each other to stay on-screen; I'm considering whether splitscreen of some kind makes sense or not. Voronoi splitscreen might be cool, but no promises.

Will hot-join be supported for multiplayer in Signs of Danger?

Yes. It's already implemented for local multiplayer, but isn't for online multiplayer just yet.

Will it be possible to play with more than 4 players in Signs of Danger?

The balancing (and UI design) in Signs of Danger will be for 1-4 players.

More than 4 players will not be officially supported, though it may be allowed via a config file hack. (I have tested online play with 8 game clients and it requires a powerful CPU, but it does work. The tricky part is how to render a HUD for 8 players!)

Technical

What engine is Signs of Danger using?

A custom engine written in Rust.

I currently use Macroquad for OpenGL graphics, Rapier for rigid body physics, egui for placeholder UI, and a custom fork of GGRS for netcode (which is itself a variant of GGPO).

What's up with this playable web build?

The playable web build I publish in some devlogs is a worse-performing hacked-up version of the latest game build of Signs of Danger, sometimes with extra special case hacks applied to get specific feedback on. I publish it to get feedback, and to force myself to keep the game playable, but mostly because I can (it's neat that this is possible at all).

The playable web builds are strictly temporary: performance is too poor (no multithreading) and convincing people to pay would be a hassle.

How does the online multiplayer work in Signs of Danger?

The netcode in Signs of Danger is based on a peer-to-peer deterministic-networking-with-rollback model, which is the same tech as what good-netcode fighting games use. I have written lots about how it works (check out the updates around November 2024) but the simple version is that game clients:

• exchange player inputs over the network only,
• rely on predicting inputs if the inputs haven't arrived in time,
• and (if a previous prediction was wrong) will roll back to a previous world state then simulate it forwards again.

It is extremely low bandwidth, resistant to packet loss, responsive-by-default and nearly entirely prevents multiplayer-specific glitches - in exchange for using more CPU and being tricky to implement.

It is also possible to turn on some input delay to paper over a friend's weaker CPU (or worse connection), though your character will feel less responsive as a result. (I'm planning to experiment with further client-side prediction to mitigate that, but haven't done so yet!)

Is the pixel physics simulation GPU or CPU-based in Signs of Danger?

Purely CPU-based right now, so a powerful multi-core CPU is desirable, and your graphics card will only be used for graphical effects. Here's why:

Firstly, the rollback-networking multiplayer netcode requires:

• high performance rollback & re-simulation (2-4ms per tick), which may run into memory bandwidth issues if using GPU-based simulation.
• perfect cross-platform determinism, which is even more difficult to pull off when GPUs are in the mix (different graphics card manufacturers cheat with maths in different ways).

Secondly, in online multiplayer, players can move away from each other, which increases the memory requirements as more simulated pixels need to be kept in-memory; older or lower-end graphics cards may not have enough VRAM for that.

Thirdly, since I am currently publishing browser builds, browsers' WebGPU technology is not widely-deployed enough yet for compute shaders to be a feasible option for the playable web build (and even if it were, the browser WebGPU spec does not support a few highly-desirable-for-performance extensions - like atomics).

A rewrite of (or option for) the pixel physics simulation to be GPU-based instead is not 100% out of the question, but it is fairly unlikely at this point.

Will Signs of Danger natively support ultra-widescreen monitors?

I develop on a 3840x1600 (that's 24:10) monitor, so I will aim to (at least) support that resolution.

You will need a powerful graphics card to support lighting at such high resolutions.

Will Signs of Danger support 4K monitors?

Probably! I don't own a high-DPI monitor currently but I intend to buy a 4K display to test on before release.

Will Signs of Danger support high refresh rate monitors?

Yes, Signs of Danger will work on high refresh rate monitors (90hz, 120hz, 144hz, etc) and will render new frames as quickly as your monitor and graphics card will allow.

However, the underlying game simulation always runs at 60hz because it is tuned for that, and the simulation tick rate must be identical for all multiplayer game clients. Specific support to show smoother movement for high refresh rate monitors ought to be possible using interpolation, but I have not implemented that currently.

Team

Are you really a solo developer?

Yep, at least by some peoples' definitions! "Slow Rush" is one-person company of just me (Caspar), and I wrote all the code, wrangled the sound, did the original art, made the website, write all the updates here, post on the various social media thingos, etc.

No really, how can I throw shade on your solo dev claim?

I have received some government funding and used that to work with an artist who has polished up or redone a lot of my sprite work, hire a composer to make the announcement trailer music and receive some advice from a marketing pro.

You finished the whole damn FAQ?

Wow, kudos.

But if my ideas are that intriguing to you, you may wish to subscribe to my newsletter: