Field Manual

Squad Surge: grow the squad, break the horde

A free browser 3D squad shooter where the road is the strategy. Grow the count, read the danger, and keep moving.

Squad Surge is an endless run-and-gun horde shooter for your browser. You steer a squad down a ruined road while every soldier fires automatically. Pick gates that add, multiply, arm, or repair the formation. Dodge traps that show their warning before they strike. Break through hordes, ambushes, barricades, turrets, and a boss at the end of every sector. The number above the squad is real: it drives how much the line can shoot and how much loss it can take.

Every run starts small. You begin with four soldiers plus any permanent Recruits upgrades, one grenade and one medkit plus Munitions upgrades, a Carbine, and a road full of decisions. The first sector teaches the language. Blue helps. Red hurts. Gold can upgrade a weapon or become a shootable soldier gate. Purple asks whether you can survive a gamble. The road gets harder every 720 metres, but your gate choices, weapons, perks, and Armory upgrades give you ways to answer it.

You do not aim the gun. You aim the squad. Drag, hold a direction, or use the gamepad to put the formation where automatic fire can solve the highest-priority target. That is the core skill: turn lane choice into fire angle, then turn fire angle into another clean lane choice.

How a run works

1. Deploy. Start a normal run or a Daily Run. The road generates from a seed; Daily Run uses the same UTC-date seed for that day.
2. Steer and fire. The squad runs forward and fires automatically at nearby enemies, bosses, gold gates, and shootable road objects. You control the lateral line.
3. Choose gates. Each row offers two or sometimes three operations. Calculate the living count before crossing.
4. Survive the road. Clear hordes, leave telegraphs, destroy roadblocks, open useful crates, and free survivors when it is safe.
5. Fight the boss. At the end of the sector, forward movement stops in an arena. Read every floor marker, clear adds, and finish the boss.
6. Choose a perk. After a boss, choose one of three available perk cards. Then the next sector begins.

The road is endless, but sectors create a rhythm. A sector is 720 metres long. Enemy health rises continuously with distance; horde density rises; elites become possible; and hazards become more varied. Bosses also account for real squad firepower so a strong squad gets a fight rather than a skipped cutscene. Progress comes from playing the geometry well, not from waiting for a hidden timer.

Read the gates

Blue means the lane helps. It may add soldiers, multiply the squad, increase fire rate, or revive fallen soldiers. Red means the lane hurts: subtraction, division, fire-rate loss, or weapon-tier loss. Gold marks weapon progress and gold panels you can shoot to raise. Purple is a 50/50 gamble: triple the squad or halve it, rounding up.

Start with the printed math. At 8 soldiers, +7 gives 15 while ×2 gives 16. At 50 soldiers, +7 gives 57 while ×2 gives 100. A ×2 gate cannot exceed the 400-soldier cap, so multiplication loses some value near the ceiling. A revive gate only helps if soldiers have fallen. A weapon tier can be the right lane before a boss, even when the other lane adds a few bodies.

Gold shootable gates are a separate decision. They begin as a small soldier gain and rise one point at a time while bullets hit them. The bullets are absorbed by the panel while they improve it. Farm an open gold gate. Stop farming when a Retcher, a Wailer, a turret, a barricade, or a dangerous horde needs your fire now.

Five tips for your first ten runs

1. Move before the warning finishes. Spike lights, flame nozzles, red rings, and boss rectangles are the instruction. Do not wait for the impact.
2. Multiply from a base. Compare +N to ×2 or ×3. Multiplication gets stronger as the living squad grows.
3. Save the medkit for a real recovery. It revives up to 35% of fallen soldiers, with a floor of six. It does nothing at zero fallen.
4. Kill the support target. Wailers haste the horde and call Runners. Retchers create acid. Blisters burst. Do not tunnel on the biggest health bar.
5. Keep one eye on the next problem. Automatic fire can finish the old horde while you are already steering toward the next safe line.

The early weapons teach different roles. Carbine is simple. Heavy Rifle gains pierce. Shotgun produces four pellets. LMG and Minigun add sustained volume. Ion Rifle hits hard and pierces three targets. Weapon gates and weapon crates advance a tier; maximum tier is VII. Good gates and target priority turn every tier into a better weapon.

Daily Run

Daily Run uses a deterministic seed from the current UTC date. That makes the day’s layout repeatable on your browser: the same seed creates the same sector grammar, including its gate rows, traps, encounters, and bosses. Use it as a training route. If a purple gamble or a crusher ended the first attempt, make the second attempt with a plan instead of hoping the road changes.

The game records a local Daily best alongside local records. Daily Run is not an account feature and does not require a sign-in. Your records live in localStorage on the device and browser you are using.

Free to play, supported by ads

Squad Surge is free and supported by advertising. A short ad may occasionally play at natural breaks: before a run starts, between sectors after you pick a perk, when you open the pause menu, or when you open the Armory. Ads never play during active gameplay. No ad interrupts a live trap, a gate choice, a horde, or a boss attack.

Optional rewarded ads are always your choice and always include a “No thanks” option. Their rewards exist only inside the game. Second Wind can revive a wiped squad once per run with max(10, 25% of peak squad) soldiers, capped at 40, plus a protective shockwave; it continues the same run. Double Coins doubles coins earned by that run on the results screen. Supply Drop adds one grenade, one medkit, and six soldiers to the next run. None of these rewards has real-world value, and nothing in Squad Surge is sold for money.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

The road rewards specific knowledge. Use these field guides when a particular decision keeps ending your run.