Open Alpha · Free to play · No app, no account
DOWNLINK is a text RPG you play by messaging a bot. Take contracts in New Socales, a city that grew until nobody could govern it. Train the skills you actually use, craft gear nobody else is carrying, and pull a crew together when a job needs more than one pair of hands. Twenty cycles a day. Every one is a choice.
Want to play tonight? Join the official server, DM the bot /start, and you’ll be on your first contract in a couple of minutes.
Run a server? Add DOWNLINK and your community becomes its own district. Free, no waitlist, no admin permission.
// 01 — The pitch
New Socales wasn’t built. It accreted. Three coastal cities grew into each other until the government quietly gave up and went home. What’s left is a functional dystopia run on corporate inertia, syndicate muscle, and twelve million people who refuse to live anywhere else.
You’re one operator with twenty cycles a day and a board full of work. Take a contract. Train a skill. Build something. Cross someone. The city keeps score, and it has a long memory.
It has the daily-session tension of the old BBS door games and the layered politics of the big online worlds, rebuilt for the way Discord actually works: in your DMs, on your phone, a few minutes at a time or a whole evening.
// 02 — How it plays
You can learn the loop in a minute. What keeps people playing is everything underneath it.
20
skills across five disciplines, and no classes
288
branching contracts across six tiers
96
schematics to find and build
35
one-of-a-kind items. One holder at a time, citywide
6
operatives, each with a four-chapter story
5
factions keeping score on you
01
No cooldown timers, no energy bar nagging you back. You get twenty cycles a day, refreshed at midnight UTC. Spend them in one sitting or across the day. When they’re gone, you’re done until reset, so every one of them costs something.
02
Twenty skills across combat, tech, stealth, social and trade. You never pick a class. You get good at what you do, and the city starts calling you something you didn’t choose: Ghost Signal, Ironhand, Fixer, War Engine.
03
Every stage of a contract asks which of your skills you’ll bet on, with the odds on the table: slip in quiet, talk your way through, or kick the door. Same target, different door, different consequences. The outcome is written, not tallied.
04
Find schematics, gather parts, and roll the bench: flawed, superior, or masterwork. Dismantle what you’ve outgrown for half its materials back. And some gear exists exactly once in the whole city. If someone else has it, you don’t.
05
Solo is a complete game. When your friends are on, pull together a crew job for two to four runners, jump into a district event, settle a grudge in a duel, or raid a rival syndicate’s turf. Everything you train solo carries straight in.
06
Install the bot and your community becomes a named district of New Socales. Characters travel to any other server they’re in that runs DOWNLINK, syndicates recruit across servers, and any syndicate strong enough can stake a claim on your turf, set its policy and collect a tithe.
// The long game
Reach Grade 30 and you can Rebirth: start again at Grade 1 with points banked, a clone of your old self in your network, and a generation title that tells the city how many lives you’ve run. The deepest story chapters only open to operators who’ve been reborn.
// Unlisted
The city keeps a few things to itself. There are systems we’re not going to spoil here, the kind you stumble into and then can’t stop thinking about. Some things you only find by playing.
// Live from New Socales
No separate app, no client to download. The whole game renders in your Discord DMs: a fiction zone for what happened, a data zone for what changed. These are the bot’s own screens, captured in Discord, with a demo cast staging the scenes.
Operator Terminal
Your terminal. Twenty cycles a day, and the whole city on the board.
Operator Terminal: Null, a level 12 Gridrunner, is in The Spire, the corporate heights (danger 3). Eleven turns remain on the clock; the data-towers hum like they know something Null doesn’t.
Grit: 140/140. Credits: 6,210. Turns: 11/20. Heat: Medium.
Actions: Run a Mission, Crew Up, Workbench, Inventory, Train, City Pulse, Profile, and Send Feedback.
On a Job
Every contract is a choice. Your skills open different doors — slip in quiet, or kick it down.
Find the Lost Cargo: Sable, a Shade, has cracked open a deeper way in. Stage 2/3, threat 4, grit 150/175. Momentum: Breakthrough — a new route opens.
Choose Infiltration level 6 to slip the loading dock: 78%, clean exit, full payout. Choose Firearms level 5 to take the floor by force: 54%, loud, heat spikes. Choose Streetwise level 5 to buy a route from a dockhand: 66%, costs 300 credits, no violence.
Other actions: File what you have & walk, or Mission Info. Location: The Hollows. Turns: 12/20.
The Payoff
Outcomes are written, not tallied. Narrative first, numbers second.
Contract Closed — Broker the Cease-fire: Cardinal, a Broker, closes the loop clean. Three sentences and a smile convince the table that the truce was their idea. Two crews that wanted each other dead shake on a line neither will admit they needed; Cardinal leaves with the cut and both their numbers.
Persuasion level 6 against threat 5. Rolled 88% versus 64%: Success. Payout: +1,100 credits, +140 Persuasion XP, +2 standing with The Lattice.
Actions: Continue or Post to the Feed. Location: The Spire. Turns: 9/20.
Your Operator
Skills, not classes. You become what you do — no menu picks it for you.
Operator Dossier — Rampart: a level 17 Enforcer who hits first and sorts it out after. Grit: 230/230. Credits: 3,150. Heat: High. Four attributes govern skills: Body 9, Reflex 5, Mind 3, Edge 4.
Skills: Close Combat level 7, Heavy Ordnance level 6, Intimidation level 5, Firearms level 4, Martial Arts level 3. Loadout: Street Cleaver (+6 Close Combat), Garrison Plate (+70 Grit), Synth-Muscle Fiber cyberware (+2 Body).
Standing: allied with Iron Parish, neutral with Kindled, wary with Lattice, hostile with Helix Dynamics. Actions: Skills, Loadout, Cyberware, Spend AP. Location: The Hollows.
Crew Job
Two to four runners, one job, coordinated live through your DMs. Everyone picks an objective and a skill.
Crew Job: round 2, threat 5. A vault full of cold air and old money; two minutes before the patrol loops back. Required objectives: #1 crack the maglock (Hardware, best: Null level 6, 76%); #2 loop the cameras (Surveil, best: Sable level 4, 70%). Optional objective #3: haul the bearer chips (Body, best: Rampart level 7, 80%).
Waiting for one crew member. Null, 140 HP: Freejacking on #1, 76%, submitted. Rampart, 230 HP: Heavy Ordnance on #3, 80%, submitted. Forge, 160 HP: waiting. Sable, 150 HP: Infiltration on #2, missed.
Gear: Breach Spike (+12% on locks), Signal Scrambler (−1 threat, cameras). Actions: Push #1, Push #2, Push #3, Defend, Retreat. Location: The Spire. Comms active.
The Workbench
Craft with intent. Same parts, different results — and rarer blueprints for the patient.
Bench Complete — Mono-Edge: Forge, a Maker, works at a bench smelling of hot alloy, solvent, and shortcuts. Every tolerance lands tight: the best version of the Mono-Edge.
Quality: Pristine (critical success). Family: Close Combat, tier 2. Materials spent: 1 Mono-Edge Blank, 2 Reflex Wire, 1 Chem Solvent. Result: +9 Close Combat, including +1 from critical quality. Ready to install.
Actions: Install or Back to Bench. Location: Old Socales.
City Pulse
A living city. Factions push, syndicates claim turf, and the season keeps score.
City Pulse — New Socales: the city keeps its own ledger, and tonight it’s running hot. Season: Long Tide, day 6/9. City mood: Restless.
Faction momentum and turf: Lattice rising, 34%; Helix Dynamics slipping, 28%; Vaelcross rising, 19%; Iron Parish holding, 12%; Kindled slipping, 7%.
District control: The Spire — Helix Dynamics; Signal Hill — Lattice; Burnside — Iron Parish; Shimmer — Vaelcross; Greyline — Neutral, ceasefire; Old Socales — Reconstruction. District buttons: Greyline, The Hollows, The Spire, Burnside. Current location: Greyline.
The Street Has Opinions
Work a block long enough and the locals come collecting. Pay, talk, or make it a problem.
Toll Time: Wick, a Courier, feels the prickle of being counted. Iron Parish runs Burnside, and tonight they want rent for the air. Their cut: 320 credits, 15% of the wallet.
Pay: hand over 320 credits; they leave and the block stays open. Talk: Streetwise level 3, 52%; pay nothing, maybe earn a finder’s fee. Refuse: Close Combat level 4, 47%; heat spikes and Iron Parish remembers.
Actions: Pay, Talk, Refuse. Location: Burnside. Turns: 6/20.
Settle It
Player versus player. No bookie, no crowd — just two runners and the space between them.
Duel — Sable versus Rampart: no bookie, no crowd, just two runners and the space between them getting smaller. Round 2/3. Sable: 118 HP. Rampart: 190 HP.
Last exchange: Sable’s Firearms attack, 84%, succeeded for 28 damage to Rampart. Rampart’s Close Combat failed, too slow on the pivot. Sable’s sight picture holds, the trigger breaks clean, and the round lands.
Actions: Strike with Firearms, Strike with Close Combat, Read & Defend, Disengage. Location: The Hollows. Comms active.
// 03 — Straight talk
DOWNLINK is playable right now. People are running contracts, building crews and fighting over turf today. But it’s early, and we’d rather be honest than glossy.
Expect rough edges and frequent changes. We ship often, we read every piece of feedback sent through the bot, and the people in the alpha are shaping where the game goes next.
Your character and progress are real and preserved. As we tune systems, some numbers will move, and we’ll tell you when they do, in-world and in plain language.
The alpha is open and free. Play on the official server tonight, or add the bot and give your own community a district. Either way you’re early, and early is when the city is still being decided.
DOWNLINK installs in about two minutes and turns your community into a district of New Socales. The game plays out in DMs; the bot posts only in one channel you create. Free during the alpha, no waitlist. See exactly what it asks for, then add it yourself.