Backseat Apocalypse
Backseat Apocalypse
One car, open farmland, and a horde that never stops growing. Your chat steers by typing WASD — w is up, d is right, wd is up-right, and the bare letters are the whole command — and every viewer's call is pooled into a single bearing the car turns toward. The weapons fire on their own, so chat never has to aim through stream delay. When enough zombie blood is collected the game holds still, three upgrade cards come up, and chat votes 1, 2 or 3. It ends when the car does, and the time survived goes on your channel's all-time record.
Free · viewers need nothing · works on any Twitch stream
How a round works
- 1
Nobody joins
There is no lobby and no !join. The moment you hit start, everyone watching is already playing — anyone who types a bearing is steering.
- 2
Chat picks the run's rule
Before the van moves, chat votes one of three random rules or a plain run: Double Horde, Glass Cannon, Boss Rush and more. A riskier rule multiplies the score, which is the seconds survived.
- 3
Chat types WASD
A bare w, a, s or d points the car up, left, down or right on screen. Letters add up for everything in between: wd is up-right, wwd leans further up. No command prefix — the letters on their own are the call.
- 4
One call per viewer, and it fades
Every viewer holds a single bearing that decays over a few seconds. Spamming buys nothing, a later call replaces an earlier one, and twenty viewers steer as decisively as two thousand.
- 5
The guns fire themselves
Weapons target on their own and keep firing. Chat only points the car, which is the one job that survives a two-second stream delay.
- 6
Blood is the experience bar
Killed zombies leave blood on the road and the car vacuums it up from a generous radius that grows as you level. Uncollected pools soak away, so the car has to keep pushing into the horde.
- 7
Level ups pause the game
Three cards come up and chat types 1, 2 or 3. The most-voted card goes on the car. Letters steer and numbers vote, so the two never get mixed up.
- 8
A boss every night from the second, three of them in turn
The Hauler, a reanimated semi that lines up and charges, soft at the back doors. The Broodmare, who crawls after the van birthing runners, twice as fast while chat is split. The Wall, a line of bodies across the whole field that cannot be killed: find the gap or drive round an end.
- 9
Short first nights, then the sun comes up
Each night ends in a sunrise. Nothing new crawls out, the horde burns, and the van gets half its hull back. Every dawn lets the upgrade cards rank higher, and the third one bolts on a fifth weapon, so a long run keeps opening up. Your record says which night chat reached.
- 10
A road event, then the dawn shop
At sunrise the van stops twice. First a road event: two choices, like searching an abandoned gas station's shop or just filling up, and chat votes 1 or 2. Then the dawn shop, where chat spends the scrap it collected on repairs, nitro or armour, or stays quiet to save it.
- 11
Survivors ride along under chatters' names
Now and then someone waits at a red flare out in the fields. Drive past and they climb onto the roof — a cop, a soldier, a hunter with a shotgun, a biker with molotovs, a nurse who patches the hull, or a mechanic who adds a weapon slot — named after one of the run's loudest backseat drivers.
What viewers type in chat
w a s d | Point the car up, left, down or right on screen. Typed on its own, no prefix. |
wd · sa · wwd | Letters add up: wd is up-right, sa is down-left, wwd leans further up. |
1 / 2 / 3 | Vote for an upgrade card while a level up holds the game still. Rule votes, road events and the dawn shop use numbers too. |
!swap | With Chat decides steering: vote to switch how chat steers. It switches once more than half of the drivers agree. |
!howto | Ask the bot to post the controls in chat. |
!backseat | Mods: open the game's setup screen. |
!start | Mods: start the run. |
!steering vote | Mods: pool (every call counts), vote (majority every 2 seconds) or chat (chat decides). Works mid-run. |
!skip | Mods: settle the open card vote, or end the run. |
Streamer settings
Built for stream delay
Aiming is automatic and steering is pooled and smoothed, so a viewer two seconds behind the action still contributes a useful bearing instead of a wrong one.
A consensus meter, for free
The strength of the pooled bearing is how much chat agrees. It shows in the middle of the steering compass, and agreement gives the car a top speed bonus.
Three ways to steer
Every call counts: all calls pooled into one heading. Majority vote: every 2 seconds the most-called direction wins, so trolls get outvoted. Chat decides: chat switches between the two with !swap.
Four hundred zombies at once
Shamblers, runners, brutes and grabbers, drawn as two instanced draw calls. Past the entity cap the game gets harder by changing the mix, never by adding bodies.
Twelve upgrades, up to five weapons
Minigun, rocket pod, flamethrower, mine dropper and ram spikes, plus motor, vacuum, plating, steering rack, transfusion, crew drills and the streamer's launcher. New weapon slots open at levels 4, 8 and 13, and the third dawn adds a fifth.
Weapon evolutions
A weapon at its top rank, with the right part on the van, evolves at the next supply crate: the minigun turns into Hailstorm, the flamethrower into Dragon's Breath. The recipes are not on screen, so chat has to find them.
Open ground, no dead ends
Every building stands on its own and a ring road runs all the way round. Fences, trees and crops never stop the van, so a chat that disagrees can never wedge it in a corner.
All-time channel records
Chat plays as one crowd here, so the record belongs to the community. Every run's time, level and kill count is filed against your channel.
Questions streamers ask
Do viewers need to join first?
No. There is no lobby and no join command — anyone who types a bearing is already playing, which makes it the fastest game here to start.
Can one person spam chat to take over the car?
No. Each viewer holds exactly one bearing at a time, and a new call replaces their old one. Fifty messages count for exactly as much as one.
Does a bigger chat steer better?
Not mechanically. The pool is weighted per viewer, so chat size does not change the physics. A large chat only reacts a little sooner on average.
Does chat aim the weapons?
Never. Every weapon targets and fires on its own. That is deliberate: positioning tolerates a two-second delay and aiming does not. The one gun that can be aimed belongs to the streamer: the roof turret follows the mouse.
What happens when the car dies?
The run ends. There is a score screen with the time survived, the level reached, the kills and the viewers who called the most bearings, and the time goes on your channel's record.
Does the streamer need to do anything?
Only start it. The run plays itself out of chat, so it works as an AFK game the same way the rest of ChatGames does. If you want to join in, hold the mouse button to fire the roof turret wherever you point: long range, heavy rounds, refilled by crates and level ups.
Keep reading
Backseat Apocalypse