[Updated 8/9/2018, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE Edition in the works!]

Receiver is a game made by Wolfire Games for the 7DFPS game jam in which you collect cassette tapes while being hunted by drones and turrets. Unlike other shooters, this game gives you manual control of the mechanical elements of a pistol - pulling back the slide, removing a magazine, cocking the hammer, so on and so forth - with a series of key presses.

As a result of the expanded, somewhat non-standard control scheme, many first time players are unable to properly operate their firearm ingame, fumbling with the controls. In combination with a particularly punishing permadeath mechanic, this leads to frustration and - in some cases - players outright uninstalling the game before they've had a chance to get used to the mechanics.

That's why I'm here to help.

As of re-writing this guide, I've played roughly 120 hours of this game. I've failed, I've struggled, I've died countless times when victory was within my grasp. But by learning the game's mechanics, analyzing my mistakes, and coming up with a few techniques of my own, I've attained sweet victory several times over. And now I pass that knowledge on to you.

This is how to beat Receiver, written by a guy who's probably died more than you have in Receiver. Enjoy.

An unknown entity dubbed "the threat" has been poisoning our media with harmful and addictive elements, gradually weakining the collective minds of humanity leading up to a final strike - an event known only as the "mindkill."

Though most of humanity was presumably killed by this blow, you've attained a resistance to this attack through the use of mindtech, a skill acquired through the help and education of your friendly neighborhood cult. Sensing this, "the threat" has engineered a different trap for you and the other "receivers": a state of deep sleep called "the dreaming."

Forced into the underlying structures of your subconscious mind, you scramble to collect all the elements necessary to rouse yourself into an awake state, all the while fending off specially concieved automatic weapons designed to operate within the dream.

On the bright side, your mindtech training means that even in your brain you have a gun. Try not to shoot the walls too much, alright?

Receiver's goal is fairly simple - collect and listen to eleven cassette tapes placed in random locations across the map. Sounds simple, right? Well buckle up, 'cause here's the catch: any damage you take kills you in one hit. Fall too high, get shot, get tasered, anything, and it's back to square one.

This guide aims to eliminate most player deaths caused by a lack of knowledge regarding game mechanics, such as firearm operation and enemy behavior patterns, so you can jump right into the sort of deaths where you know it's your fault. (Then subsequently get consumed by bitterness.) Fun stuff!

With all that out of the way, it's time to boot the game!

When you first open Receiver, you're gonna want to tweak the settings a bit. Go to the dropdown menu named Graphics Quality and set it to "Fastest" to get a higher framerate with very little difference in the visuals. Optimal screen resolution varies depending on your computer specs, but as a general rule of thumb smaller resolutions in windowed mode generally run better. (The game isn't very well optimized.) Leave the controls as they are for the most part, with the exception of maybe rebinding Crouch to CTRL (Default is C.)

Once you actually jump ingame, pause with ESC and mess around with the settings to your liking as well. Personally I tick the box for "Lock gun to screen center" and put the "Distance from eye to gun" slider to about a quarter from the left.

Mouse sensitivity is subjective, but it might be easier to aim at a lower setting - generally for first person shooters you want to be able to turn around fully in a 360 by moving the mouse from one side of a mousepad to the other.

Finally, you're gonna want to go into "Advanced sound options" and lower the "Music" and "Voice" sliders just a bit. Both of the enemy types the game throws at you have easily recognizable sound cues, and you don't want those getting drowned out by other sources of audio.

Now that the setup's out of the way, it's time to look at your starting loadout. This consists of several items, among them:

- One of the following pistols:

[Colt 1911 A1] - The standard-issue training weapon. 7+1 Mag Capacity (+1 = Chambered Shot.)

[Glock] Can toggle between semi-auto and full auto firing modes. 17+1 Mag Capacity.

[Smith & Wesson Model 10 "Victory" Revolver] Easy to load, slow to fire. 6 Chamber Capacity.

- A random number of loose bullets (and/or backup mags, displayed along your hotbar.)

- A flashlight (may or may not spawn with you.)

It goes without saying that if you spawn with the Revolver, no magazines will spawn with you. Upon spawning, take inventory of what you have. If you have a flashlight, holster it in a hotbar slot by pressing any number on the upper row of your keyboard. Numbers beyond 7 place the item in an offscreen inventory slot; this is useful for hiding extra flashlights.

If you have the Colt, press V to toggle the safety, then press F to pull back the hammer. Holding F and then pressing LMB will allow you to release the hammer gently.

Hold T+R to inspect the pistol's chamber. if there isn't a bullet there, pull back the slide with R to load a round. If the slide is stuck, press T to release it.

Upon doing this and ensuring that a round is chambered, take out your mag with E and holster your pistol on the hotbar using the tilde key (~). While your gun is holstered, you can remove bullets from magazines by repeatedly pressing R, or fill a magazine with loose bullets in a similar fashion by pressing Z.

It's typically a good idea to unload all the spare mags on your hotbar (pull them up by pressing 1-9), then dropping them on the ground with E; by using one magazine instead of several, it's easier to keep track of your bullet count and keep your gun filled at all times.

After filling a mag to the brim (or with however many bullets you have), unholster your gun with ~ and load the magazine with Z. Unless you weren't able to chamber a bullet earlier, do not pull back the slide with R - you'll drop a bullet on the ground. If you do this, pick it back up with G and feed it back into the magazine.

Finally, if you're using the Glock, make sure the full-auto firing mode is disabled by moving the toggle with V. (Semi auto on the left, full auto on the right.) You are now locked and loaded, with a bullet in the chamber, a fully loaded magazine, and your gun set up to work when you need it most.
Firing is standard operation - RMB (Right Mouse) to aim, LMB (Left Mouse) to shoot.

With the Revolver, gun prep is a fair deal simpler. Slide out the revolving cylinder with E, then empty out the chambers with V (sometimes bullet casings stick, so just press it a few times to get them all out.) Pick up any unspent bullets with G, then repeatedly press Z until all six chambers are filled. Put the cylinder back into place with R, pull back the hammer with F (firing does this automatically, but you can prep the shot), spin the cylinder with the scrollwheel of your mouse for a touch of style and your Revolver is good to go.

The more you practice with either loadout, the better you'll get, and the more likely you'll survive combat later on.

If you're doing everything right, it should look something like this:

Moving in this game is fairly standard in most aspects for a first-person shooter. W and S to move forward and backward, A and D to strafe left and right, Spacebar to jump and C to crouch (unless you rebound it to CTRL.)

Instead of Left Shift as the go-to sprint key, however, you run by tapping W repeatedly. Running into rooms you haven't secured yet is a good way to get yourself killed - reserve it for when you need to backtrack, evade oncoming enemies, or clear small gaps with a jump.

Occasionally you'll come across some odd map geometry - usually when climbing a flight of stairs - that prevents you from moving forward or upward, like hitting a wall of jello head-on. Be extremely careful around these areas, as jumping too erratically in an attempt to get over it could lead to you falling off and dying.

Pressing and holding "?" will bring up a menu displaying all the controls and their actions. Actions you can do immediately or are doing will be highlighted in white, bold text, whereas the rest will be greyed out.

Lastly, pressing and holding L will start a new game by causing the previous Receiver to fade out of existence. By all means, go ahead and kill that guy six times so you can start off with a Colt and a flashlight.

Due to the pace at which this game was created, Reciever does not feature "true" level randomization. Rather, each section of the map is a premade, interchangeable set piece drawing from a pool of rooms designed to connect with one another. Enemy placement and loot piles also have similar faux randomization, allowing you to memorize the more noteworthy locations and potentially avoid more dangerous ones.

The room layouts connect in cells comprised of three floor levels - the rooftop, the interior and the basement. Certain room types have staircases that allow you to travel freely between these levels, and occasionally cells are broken up by wide open courtyards.

Now that you know how to operate your firearm and navigate the levels, it's time to talk about the enemies this game throws at you. Though more were originally planned when the game was in development, the current build has two types of enemies: Turrets and Killdrones.

Turrets are fairly self-explanatory. It's a stationary gun with internal rotors that turn it clockwise while a mounted camera on the front searches for a hostile presence (i.e. you.) If one spots you, you have maybe half a second to run for cover before it sends a fully-automatic volley of bullets in your general direction. Once out of it's sight, it will quickly revert to its previous clockwise scanning patrols.

While it's scanning, the camera on the front of the turret projects a rectangular section of light onto whatever surface it's looking at, so even without seeing the turret itself you can know its approximate location and where the gun is facing. The light also changes color depending on the situation:

- Blue = Scanning (it's searching for you,)

- Yellow = Alerted (it's seen you,)

- Red = Engaging Hostile (it's shooting you.)

There are several approaches you can take with turrets to avoid becoming the posterboy of a swiss cheese ad.

1) Avoidance
If you're in an open area with lots of cover or an apartment with rooms you can duck into, you can potentially save ammunition by simply maneuvering yourself outside of the turret's range of view as it turns. Be sure there aren't a whole lot of turrets present before doing this, though, as you can get into a bad situation really fast.

2) Combat
If you have to engage a turret to pass through an area or scrounge for extra ammo/tapes, it's best to play it smart. Turrets have several weak points you can target to disable or deactivate them, as you can see through this informative diagram:



The Ammo Box and Weapon Control Module are both fairly easy to hit due to their large size and vibrant coloration. If you hit the former, you reduce the turret's ammo pool to one chambered shot; if you hit the latter, you disable the weapon entirely. However, the turret can still look around and detect you. It doesn't pull aggro from other bots, but it's annoying.

The Camera, although somewhat harder to hit, is a much better target if you can get the shot. Without the camera, the gun can't target anything, and its rotors will spin it around uselessly for all eternity.

Both the Battery and Rotor are located in the base of the turret, which is a good place to aim if you can't get a close-range shot; however, bullets shot at longer ranges frequently glance off the metal hull without penetrating, and if you hit the rotor instead of the battery the sentry will simply stop turning instead of being fully disabled. This can be used to your advantage if you get it to break while it's looking at a wall or corner, but if it's stuck looking in your direction you might as well just backtrack and find a different way through. Avoid this scenario if possible.

Some random facts about turrets that may also help:

- Turrets have a limited ammo pool. If you've destroyed a turret's rotor, you can attempt to make it unload all it's ammo on a nearby wall by stepping into the camera's peripheral vision. Be careful, though, as bullets have a chance to ricochet off walls.

- Turrets can friendly-fire other turrets. If you can get behind one while it's looking away and get another turret behind it to spot and shoot at you, the ensuing spray of bullets will likely tip it sideways and damage several components. Very risky, but neat if you can pull it off and get away afterwards.

- Turrets operate with the camera in a level position by default, but can tilt their aim up or down to shoot players spotted from a distance. If you can get above a turret in close proximity, however, it cannot detect you, making it more or less a free shot. If alternate paths are available, you can make a turret look up at you and take a lower path where its camera can no longer spot you, or vice versa, for a much safer takedown.

- The turn speed of a turret is limited, and once the player is out of view it freezes in position for a moment before resuming the standard scanning patrol. This means that if you sprint to the side of a turret as it's spotting you, you can outrun the turn speed and get a window of opportunity to shoot out the camera before it starts moving again. For a riskier, flashier move, try sprinting dead-on towards the turret and crouch-jumping over it as it spots you.



In a nutshell:

1) Exploit the turret's blind spots to avoid combat or advance on its position for an easier shot.

2) Use cover to your advantage, keep a close eye on the camera's projected light, and shoot 'em
when they aren't looking.

3) Target critical components to maximize your chance of success and conserve ammo.

Killdrones, on the other hand, are a bit more complicated to deal with. These flying death machines hover about scanning the ground with a small, circular beacon. If you get spotted by one, it immediately hones in on your location and fires off a taser powered by hatred and crushed dreams. These bots have ended many a promising run with a 50,000 volt dose of reality to the spinal column.

The Killdrone's camera light projection looks different from the turrets - a circle instead of a rectangle - but shares the same color coding. Blue by default, yellow if it spots you, and red if it's close enough to fire off its taser. Don't let it get close enough to fire its taser.

Killdrones usually appear in wider, more open spaces so as to have room to zip about and look for the player. These mainly include outdoor sections (such as the rooftops, courtyards, bridges, etc.) though they can also be found inside enclosed spaces (green hallways, blue window rooms, so on and so forth.)

As with the Turrets, there are several different ways to deal with them. However, taking Killdrones out is highly recommended if possible.

1) Avoidance - If you're too low on ammo to deal with several killdrones at once and know you won't find any more bullets if you backtrack, you can try to get past them by simply booking it straight to an adjacent door or entrance. If one of them spots you and starts pursuing, don't panic - focus on getting to the door in question, as Killdrones tend to have a habit of bumping into walls and door corners.

If by chance one manages to get through, your best chance of survival is to keep running and to turn as many corners as possible. Killdrones have somewhat poor air control, and tend to have a sort of slingshot movement pattern (i.e. they charge in a straight line fast, but turn poorly in a wide arc before flinging themselves at you again.) Also, if a killdrone is divebombing towards you from the sky, running underneath it before it reaches the ground level is a good method of either putting some distance between you and it, or getting close enough for an attack to be effective.

Being pursued by a Killdrone is extremely terrifying, but if you know how to avoid its attacks it can be exploited in just the right manner for you to escape.



Killdrones have a short attention span, much like turrets, and if you can get out of their view they'll go back to their patrols. (They also lower themselves slightly when they come off of an alert state, so be careful if you've just lost one at a door - it could be hovering low just above the floor.

2) Combat
When all else fails, salvation lies in a loaded gun and a steady hand. Combat with a Killdrone varies depending on one very important variable: Whether or not it's aware of you. Here's a handy diagram of what spots to target:



Unaware - If a Killdrone is unaware of you, time is of the essence - it could detect you at any moment. Aim for the white central hull, which contains both the Motor and Battery. A hit to the Battery and the thing's down for the count; a hit to the Motor and it's down from the sky, then down for the count when it bashes itself against the cold hard ground. (Be wary, though - if it doesn't fall far enough, it might not be damaged enough to deactivate. Check for if the Camera is moving, and be careful not to get within striking range of its Taser on the ground.) In situations with three or more killdrones, like a courtyard or bridge between buildings, it's easier to pick them off from a rooftop balcony than from the bottom floor, where their Cameras are scanning.

Aware - When it's actually charging you from the skies, you can be a bit less picky about where you hit. The central hull is a pretty big target, and a good one at that, but with limited ammo and a deadeye shot you might be more concerned about taking out either the Camera or the Taser. A shot to the camera will effectively disable the killdrone, but if done while it's charging you it will likely fly to the last approximate spot it saw you at and fire off its taser in a circular flight path. Taking out the taser renders it useless in combat, but that won't stop it from trying to divebomb you repeatedly at close range to no avail. If you're looking for a better shot, you can try dodging the initial attack (as detailed earlier) and shoot it down from a closer range with a quick burst before it boomerangs back.

In short:

1) Take advantage of the Killdrone's limited maneuverability by running through doorways and making sharp turns.

2) Break line-of-sight to cut off the chase.

3) If possible, take them down before they spot you.

4) Aim for critical components and evade through side-strafing.

If you want these, get 'em somewhere else. There's other guides for that. (On a side note, it'd be neat if they implemented the slo-mo feature as a consumable item, something along the lines of the Focus Pill in Heavy Bullets.)

Hopefully this helped out! And for those who want it, here's a wallpaper-sized (1920x1080) version of the thumbnail image.