Blackbird Hollow

Rin in the foreground, with the Astronomer and Rosie behind her, on the tiled floor of the airframe hall. — Rin, the Astronomer and Rosie on the floor of the airframe hall.

Floors: 7, and the way out
Fights: 19, four of them bosses
Party: 4, and Mote
Renderer: three.js r187, WebGPU with a WebGL 2 fallback

A salvage job under a mountain

It is 2087. Rosie needs parts that nobody has made in a hundred years: titanium skin panels, a J58 inlet spike, the things that made the SR-71 what it was. The only place they still exist is the base where the airframes were built, sealed behind blast doors in the side of a mountain since 1974.

She brings a team. Seven cuts the chains. Rin, who has a body this time, takes the hits. The Astronomer heals, and lets entropy do the rest. Mote rides on Seven's back when the drones come, which they do. Something woke the base's security, and nobody knows what.

The Inspector is down there too. Ask him what he's doing and he'll tell you he's working a case.

Seven floors down

Floor	What you do	What gets in the way
1 · Hangar Doors	Get through the blast doors, climb to the office on the catwalks to turn the lift power on, cut the chains on the freight lift's gate.	Two hunters waiting in the hall, and a patrol circling the airframe on its jig.
2 · Metal Shop	Cut the crane's hook loose so Rosie can drive a slab over the flooded pit, open the parts cage, take the titanium panels.	Two patrols, the Foreman on the crane rail, and a swarm waiting in the inspection booth Rin climbs into.
3 · Clean Rooms	Flood the decon hall with gas, cycle the airlocks, fetch the infirmary key for the reader on the far side.	A patrol in the decon hall and an ambush in the infirmary.
4 · Power Plant	Start three generators, one of them up on the catwalk past a chained vent, then ride the inclined car down the shaft.	A patrol among the generators, and drones that board the car halfway down.
5 · Plotting Room	Read three codes off the plotting screens, open the vault, take the flight computer.	A patrol in the mess and the Sentry, who hides behind the screens until you knock them out.
6 · Engine Test Cells	Climb the gantries and cut the chains holding the J58 on its dolly.	Two patrols in the cell and the Burner, whose blast every third turn can't be blocked.
7 · The Runway	Free the last airframe from its jig, take the star tracker, open the runway doors.	Two patrols in the hangar and the Carrier, which launches drones of its own.

The fights

Fights are turn-based, in the vein of Chrono Trigger and Expedition 33. Everyone acts in speed order, which you can see along the top of the screen. Attacks build Focus; skills spend it. Pairs can combine into a dual tech, at the cost of both their turns.

When a drone winds up, a ring closes on whoever it's aiming at. Press as it closes to block, and right on the beat for a perfect block. Rin hits back on a perfect one. If timing isn't your thing, turn it off in the pause menu and every hit lands a little softer instead.

Wins give experience to the whole party, and new skills open at levels 3 and 5. Sneak past a patrol and you skip the fight, but you'll meet the bosses with less behind you.

The party

Rin Calder, a young woman with short spiky black hair with copper underneath, in an orange work jacket. — **Rin**Tank. Has a body now.

Seven, a small robot with a teal head and two glowing rectangular eyes. — **Seven**Tank. Cuts the chains.

Rosie, a young woman with blue hair, a headset with an antenna, and big blue eyes. — **Rosie**Damage, and keeps Seven running.

The Astronomer, a pale woman with long white hair and grey eyes. — **The Astronomer**Heals, and lets things rot.

How to play

Action	Keyboard and mouse	Gamepad
Move	WASD or arrows, `Shift` to run	Left stick, left trigger to run
Look	Mouse, wheel to zoom	Right stick
Cut a chain	Hold `E`	Hold A
Use, talk, pick up	Tap `E`	A
Change who leads	`Tab` or `1` to `4`	Y
Scan	`F`	X
In a fight: choose	`W`/`S` or arrows, then `E`, `Enter` or `Space`; `Q` to go back	D-pad, A, B
In a fight: block	`Space` as the ring closes	B or A
Pause, sound	`Esc`, `M`	Start

Touch: drag on the left half to move and the right half to look. In a fight, tap a menu entry, and tap the block button as the ring closes.

Inside the base

The party at the foot of a cliff at night, in front of riveted blast doors lit by two sodium floodlights. — The blast doors, sealed since 1974.

A long underground hall with catwalks along both walls and an SR-71 airframe on a jig in the middle. — The airframe hall, from the catwalks.

A metal shop with a rolling mill and presses, a flooded pit bridged by a steel slab hung from a crane. — The Metal Shop. The crane still works.

A turn-based fight in the airframe hall: the party in formation facing a hunter, a shield drone and a welder, with the SR-71's nose in the foreground, the turn order across the top and party cards along the bottom. — A fight under the Blackbird's nose.

Borrowed from other GameLab projects

From Shackled PrisonThe party, the chains, the lifts and the Inspector. The cast comes over on Shackled Prison's rig and toon shading, now with fight clips.
From Black Budget BirdThe SR-71 airframe on the jig is built from that game's Blender script, cut open where the skin panels haven't gone on yet.
From FlyLab Tank WarfareThe newer three.js: r187 with the WebGPU renderer, node materials, and the same post effects stack.

Build notes

Blender, by script. Each floor is built in Blender from one layout file that also tells the game where every wall, walkway, chain and lamp is. Light from the lamps is baked into the floors in Cycles. The surfaces come from eight small sculpted reliefs, baked to normal, colour and roughness maps and projected onto everything from three sides.

Fights, tested in bulk. The fight rules live in one plain JavaScript file with no graphics, so a script can play the whole slice thousands of times: four kinds of player, every route through the patrols, health carried from fight to fight. The XP curve, the rests and the shop patrol's line-up were all set from those runs.

Played to the end. Before it shipped, a script played it start to finish through the real controls: the title screen, the opening, every fight through the menus with blocks on Space, every walk on the keys, a reload and Continue halfway, and the end card. It found the things a person would trip on, like a catwalk you couldn't get onto.

Read the design notes and the changelog.