RELAY RIOT: Quick Survival Guide

How to play the game without dying — or losing your save file — in the first five days.

1. How to Play (The Basics)

Relay Riot no longer runs on capturing relay markers. It's a day/night survival clock now, and it does not stop:

The clock never stops: Every 30 seconds the game flips between Day and Night. Zombies only spawn at Night — during the Day nothing new spawns, so use that window to loot, restock at the Dealer, build barricades, and clean up stragglers.
Nights get worse: Each night pulls a random Night Type (see section 3) and throws zombies at you in rushes — a cluster of several at once, then a lull, then another rush. The rushes get bigger and the lulls get shorter the more nights you survive.
Hostages appear every night — find them, fight past their guard, and get them to the Medical Van. See section 4, because this is the part that can end your save file.
By the time Day 5 arrives, every hostage you've found must be fully cured. If even one is still uncured, still being carried, still sitting unclaimed in the world, or has already turned — your save is wiped. Certs and every upgrade you've bought, gone, reset to zero. This is not a soft failure. Take it seriously from Night 1.

2. Controls

The camera is a fixed top-down view, GTA1-style — it does not rotate. W is always "up" on screen, no matter which way you're aiming.

Key	Action
W, A, S, D	Walk or drive cars (screen-relative — the camera never turns)
Mouse + Left Click	Aim and shoot (click or hold)
Shift (Hold)	Focus aim — slower movement, much more precise
1	Fists
2, 3, 4	Weapon slots — also cycle with the scroll wheel
R	Reload
F	Get in or out of a car (Space = handbrake while driving)
G	Throw a Molotov
H	Use your best held item
B	Build a barricade (costs Wood)
E	Talk to the Dealer, when near his marker
C	Cure a hostage, when near the Medical Van
Esc	Pause

3. Night Types

Every night rolls one of six modifiers at random. Nothing tells you which one you got except the banner at nightfall — read it.

Static Signal: Standard horde. No modifiers. This is your baseline.
Double Relay: Twice as many zombies, but each one has noticeably less health. Wide fights, not tough ones.
Ice Relay: The streets are slick. You (and the zombies) slide instead of stopping and turning on a dime — plan your movement a beat ahead.
Blood Relay: Zombies are faster, tougher, and hit harder across the board. The most dangerous single-night modifier.
Dead Fog: Visibility drops hard. You will not see zombies coming from more than a short distance away.
Runner Swarm: Weak, low-damage zombies — but fast and relentless, and there are a lot of them. Death by a thousand cuts if you stand still.

4. Hostages & AlphaZombies

This is the real objective layer now, and it's the only way your save file can actually be lost.

Finding them: A new batch of hostages appears somewhere in the district each night — more of them the further you get (one or two early on, growing over time). Each one is guarded by an AlphaZombie: tougher, meaner, and marked with a red "ALPHA" label so you can spot the threat from a distance. AlphaZombies only ever appear guarding a hostage — killing one pays a solid cash bonus.
Carrying them: Once the guard is down, walk up to the hostage to pick them up. You can carry more than one at a time, but every hostage you're carrying slows you down — decide how greedy you want to be before a horde catches you mid-carry.
The Medical Van: Look for it near your spawn point. Walk in while carrying hostages and they're automatically delivered — you get a cash bonus per hostage secured, and their infection clock starts.
Curing: Standing near the Medical Van, press C to attempt a cure. Kwuarm cures a hostage infected by a regular zombie; Myre Ash cures one infected by an AlphaZombie. The game tells you exactly which one you're short on if you try without it.
The clock: an uncured, secured hostage has five minutes before they turn. A turned hostage becomes a hostile zombie right at your van — and has a real chance of infecting another hostage you already secured, resetting that one's clock to something much shorter. Don't let cured/uncured pile up unattended.

5. Guns & Items

Twelve guns plus fists, split across three equip slots:

Sidearms: Pistol (starting weapon, reliable at range), Revolver (slower, hits much harder)
SMGs: Machine Pistol, SMG, Uzi — all fast-firing, all ammo-hungry. Don't hold the trigger down mindlessly.
Rifles: Assault Rifle, Carbine (tighter spread, harder hit), Sniper Rifle (devastating, slow, precise)
Shotguns: Shotgun, Sawed-off (fewer pellets but brutal up close, useless at range)
Heavy: Minigun (huge clip, chews through ammo), Grenade Launcher (explosive, area damage)
Fists: Free, silent, saves ammo on weak targets
Molotov (G): Sets an area on fire. Great against a crowd. Don't walk into your own flames.

Item hotbar: you can hold at most 3 different kinds of item at once — stacking more of a kind you already have is unlimited, but a brand-new fourth kind is blocked until you use, craft with, or cure with one of your existing three. You start every run with 3 Kwuarm, 3 Myre Ash, and 3 Chocolate Bars, which already fills that limit.

Other items you'll find or buy: Cookies, Kebab, Pizza, Lobster (straight healing), Cocktail and Vodka (healing, but impair your driving for a couple of minutes), Rolling Paper (combine with Kwuarm to roll a Blunt), and — extremely rarely from the Dealer — an Unidentified Forbidden Powder. Nobody's ever been able to tell us what that one does. We'd advise against finding out.

6. The Dealer & Money

Two currencies:

Cash: earned in-run from kills, drops, and hostage bonuses. Resets every run. Spend it while you have it.
Certs: your permanent currency, banked at the end of a run and spent on upgrades in the Shop between runs. This is what a Day 5 save wipe takes from you.

Look for the gold-ringed marker on your minimap — that's the Dealer. Walk up and press E to browse. His stock is random and limited, but you can pay to reroll it. Weapons and items bought from him respect the same 3-item-type cap as everything else.

Between runs, spend Certs in the Shop on permanent upgrades: Vitality (max health), Kevlar Plating (armor cap), Quick Hands (faster reloads), Stockpile (more starting Wood and Molotovs), and Field Medic (more starting armor).

Supply Drops: every so often a crate marked by a light beam spawns somewhere in the district with a visible countdown. Reach it before time runs out for a free weapon, ammo, and a cash bonus — miss the window and it's gone.

7. Who's Out There

Locals: ordinary people. Not a threat.
Gang members: hostile, will shoot on sight, drop decent loot.
Wardens: armed and dangerous, drop the best ammo and health when they go down.
Zombies: your main problem, every night, in escalating rushes.
AlphaZombies: tougher zombies, found exclusively guarding hostages. See section 4.

8. Pro-Tips

Treat Day as prep time, not downtime. Nothing spawns, but the clock to nightfall is still running. Use it.
Don't hoard hostages. Deliver and cure as you go rather than stacking up uncured ones near the deadline — the five-minute clock does not care how busy you are.
Watch what you're carrying. Every hostage on your back is speed you don't have when a rush catches you.
Break shacks for Wood early and keep a few barricades in reserve — they physically block zombies and buy you room to breathe mid-rush.
Cure item math: know which of Kwuarm or Myre Ash you're low on before you're standing at the van with a hostage about to turn.
Combo your kills. Killing fast without taking damage builds your Carnage meter, which upgrades your drop quality — getting hit resets progress, so trading blows for kills is a bad deal late in a fight.
The AlphaZombie is the fight that matters. Everything else near a hostage is a distraction from clearing that guard.

Updated Aug-21-2026