Retix › How to play Retix

How to play Retix

Retix is a 3/4-perspective 2D shooter that runs in a browser tab. Nothing is hidden behind a tutorial, so this page is the whole control scheme, on both a keyboard and a thumb.

The loop

You pick a mode and a class, the server drops you into a map, and every hit is decided server-side. Your client predicts; the server rules. Kills, assists, headshots and time spent alive turn into gold when the match ends, and gold unlocks weapons and upgrades that carry into the next match.

No download, no account requirement. A guest can play. Signing in is what makes the gold and the unlocks persist.

Controls

Every action above exists on both input methods. The touch layout keeps everything a thumb needs mid-fight inside reach of the aim stick, and the left thumb never leaves movement.

The touch controls are not a permanent furniture set. A button is laid out every frame but drawn only while it has a job to do, so the context button that picks a gun up appears when you are standing on one and is gone when you are not. Leaving it on screen would be worse than useless: a hit target behind an invisible control silently swallows shots that were meant for the fire button next to it.

What your browser guesses and what the server decides

Your client runs the same movement and combat rules the server runs, on the same code, and applies your input the instant you press it. You never wait a round trip to start walking. The server runs the authoritative copy and corrects you when the two disagree, so a laggy connection makes you slide backwards instead of letting you shoot through a wall.

Nothing that decides a hit lives in the browser. The server resolves damage and headshots. It also owns reload timing, magazine contents and weapon stats. The client receives the outcome. An edited client can change what it draws.

It cannot change what happened.

The camera works on the same principle. Its zoom rises until the viewport shows no more world than the server is willing to send you, so a 4K monitor draws the same fight bigger instead of showing you more of the map. A larger screen, a browser zoom-out and a tampered client are all worth zero extra sight.

Fighting without a gun

Bare hands are a real option, not a placeholder. A punch has its own reach and cooldown, and it lands the moment it connects. In the opening seconds of a Battle Royale, before anyone has found a weapon, it is frequently all either player has.

A punch is not a shot. It never enters the accuracy figures, and since a fist has no head band it can never produce a headshot. Counting swings as fired rounds would report a permanent 100% accuracy for everybody who ever used their fists.

Staying alive

Every arena map carries thirteen fixed pickup points: seven health and six ammunition on most of them, six and seven on Courtyard. They never move between matches, so knowing where they are is map knowledge worth as much as knowing the sightlines. Battle Royale has none of them. On Frontier, health and ammunition come out of loot piles like everything else.

On some weapons the ammunition matters more than the health does.

A Light MG carries 80 rounds and reloads in 4.2 seconds, the longest reload in the game, so a Gunner holding an angle is usually closer to an ammunition problem than a health one.

Jumping is a real tool and not only a traversal move. It changes your silhouette for the moment you are in the air, and the melee reach gets a bonus off it.

Gold and upgrades

The economy server awards gold from the raw match report. That report contains kills, deaths, assists and headshots. It also contains active time. The client never calculates a payout, so an edited client cannot pay itself. Between matches, gold unlocks weapons and upgrades that the server applies before the next match.

There is no way to buy gold. Every coin in the game came out of a match somebody played, so a weapon you meet in a lobby is a weapon somebody earned.