How to play

Getting started

Nothing 2 Lose is a free co-op zombie shooter that runs in your browser. There is nothing to download or install: open the site, press play and you are in a round within seconds. You play as a survivor with a squad of AI teammates (or real players in multiplayer) and your job is simple to say and hard to do: stay alive, kill zombies and finish the map's objectives before the horde wears you down.

You can play as a guest straight away. A guest's progress (Cash, EXP, rank, the guns and gear you bought) is saved in your browser, so it survives a reload but stays on that one device and is lost if you clear your browser data. If you want to keep it safe, create a free account with an email address and a password, or sign in with Google. An account keeps your progress on our server, lets you play with your own name on any device, and can take over the progress you earned as a guest when you register. Only rounds the server actually saw count toward that transfer.

Every new player starts with the same kit: the MP5 Classic as a primary, the Peashooter as a sidearm, and 2 × Grenade, 2 × Lifevest, 2 × Medkit so you can try items and armor from the first round. Your very first round always takes place on Café County, a straightforward survival map where all you need to do is shoot.

Tip: the first round is deliberately forgiving. Your bots are all medics and there is extra help if you go down, so use it to learn the controls rather than worrying about winning.

Controls

The game plays like most shooters: move with the keyboard, aim with the mouse. Click into the game to lock the mouse; press Esc to get it back. The camera has two views. Zoomed all the way in you play in first person, where the right mouse button aims down the sights. Scroll out and you get a third-person camera that follows your character; there the mouse moves a free cursor, holding the right button turns the camera, and your character turns to face where you shoot.

Your loadout has two gun slots on 1 and 2, and up to five item slots on 3 to 7. Items are things like grenades, medkits and molotovs: take one out with its number key, then click to throw or use it. Pressing the key of the gun you are already holding puts it away, leaving you bare-handed, where the mouse buttons punch and kick. Punches and kicks also work with E and Q while you hold a gun; they trip zombies and are a good way to buy space when you are cornered.

Playing on a phone or tablet

The game works on phones and tablets in landscape. Hold your phone sideways; in portrait it asks you to rotate. On touch screens you always play in first person. A virtual stick on the left moves you, and pushing it all the way to the edge makes you sprint. Drag anywhere on the right half of the screen to look around. The fire button is also a look surface: hold it and drag to shoot and aim at the same time. Auto-fire is on by default, so your gun shoots by itself while your crosshair is on a zombie, and you can turn it off in the settings. A tap on AIM raises your sights with a little snap toward the nearest target. Buttons for reload, jump, crouch, use and chat sit around the edges, and the squad icon opens the squad panel and the Armory. Touch controls get a light aim assist that only slows your aim slightly over a target; it never locks on, and it is never active with a mouse.

How a round works

From the main menu you pick a map yourself or let the game pick a random one, choose how many AI teammates you want in your squad, and deploy. Each map has one fixed mode. On a survival map you hold out against the horde until the timer runs out. Most maps are objective missions instead: restart generators, carry fuel cans to a vehicle, defend a position, push a cart along a track, and finally board the escape vehicle. The objective line at the top of the screen always tells you what to do next, and an arrow points you to it.

Zombies come in a steady stream with bigger horde waves in between, and the pressure grows the longer the round goes on. Plain zombies are the bulk of it, but special zombies mix in: runners, leapers that pin you down, tickers that explode, and big brutes that soak up a lot of damage. The zombies guide covers every kind.

A round is won when the squad completes the last objective (or survives a survival map's clock). It is lost when every survivor is dead. To get the round reward when the squad wins, you must be alive at the end, and on maps that end with an escape you must be on board when it leaves. On Easy and Medium maps a lost round still pays part of the reward if it lasted long enough; on Hard and Extreme maps a loss pays nothing beyond what you earned from kills during the round.

When you die and nobody revives you, you are not just sent to the menu. You can spectate your team, or respawn as a zombie for the rest of the round and hunt the survivors yourself. Playing as a zombie is always your choice and never forced.

Cash, EXP and ranks

Everything you do in a round earns two currencies. Cash buys guns, attachments, armor and items in the Store between rounds. EXP raises your rank, and your rank decides which guns you are allowed to buy. You earn both from kills, from objective work, from reviving teammates and from the round reward at the end. A plain Zombie killed by you pays $25 and 12 EXP; tougher zombies pay much more, and some kills are worth extra on harder maps or when the zombie is an elite. When one of the core bots in your squad gets a kill, you still get 20% of its reward, so a strong squad keeps your income going even when you are busy with an objective.

The round reward is the big payday. Its size depends on the map's difficulty, and it pays Cash plus EXP equal to 50% of that Cash.

Ranks go from 0 to 60. Each rank needs a bit more EXP than the last, and your title changes every few ranks. A higher rank does not hand you guns for free: it unlocks them in the Store, and you still pay their Cash price. The weapons guide lists every gun with its rank and price.

Tip: your first paid gun comes fast. Spend early Cash on a better primary before spending it on attachments, and keep a few medkits in stock.

Ammo stations and the in-round Armory

Your gun starts each round with a full magazine and a set amount of spare ammo. When you run low, look for an ammo station: stand near one and press R to refill the gun in your hand (magazine and spare ammo). It even works through walls. Each survivor can refill at each station 4 times per round, so it pays to know where every station on a map is and not to burn all your refills at the first one. When your held gun is nearly empty, the stations light up on the map and on your screen. Stations only refill normal ammo: special ammo types such as fire or explosive rounds are bought as loads in the Store and never refill during a round.

Hold Tab (or tap the squad icon on a phone) during a round to open the squad panel and its Armory tab. There you can spend the Cash you earned in this round on items right away, one of each per round. Extra Ammo drops a box at your feet that refills ammo when no station is near. What you spend in the Armory comes out of the round's earnings, which are added to your wallet at the end of the round.

Some maps don't sell an item in the Armory when an objective is about delivering it.

Going down and reviving

When your health hits zero you go down. A countdown starts, and until it runs out a teammate can bring you back. Reviving needs Defibrillators: a survivor carrying them walks up to the fallen body and clicks on it. The revived survivor stands up with a little health and a short protective shield, and the reviver earns Cash and EXP. Defibrillators cost $130 in the Store and unlock at rank 11. With nobody down, the same item shocks the zombie in front of you.

A revive is a one-time rescue: each survivor can be revived once per life, and a second fall is final. A lethal headshot can't be revived at all. Some of your AI teammates are medics who carry Defibrillators and run to anyone who is down, you first. If the countdown runs out you are out for the round, unless the map is on Extreme, where every fallen survivor comes back when the squad clears an objective step.

The best way to survive is not to go down: carry a Medkit to heal yourself or a teammate, wear armor for extra protection, and don't wander off alone.

Your AI squad

In single player every teammate is an AI survivor. Bots shoot zombies, roam the map with you, and take on objective work, such as carrying items and holding interaction points, so you are never stuck doing every task alone. When a zombie grabs or pins a survivor, nearby bots rush in to free them, and medic bots revive whoever is down. Each bot starts with a Medkit or Defibrillators and a grenade.

The squad picker in the lobby lets you choose how many bots you take, and the map's difficulty caps the number that actually spawn. More bots means more firepower, but the horde grows a little with every extra survivor too. Bots are deliberately weaker shots than a good player on easy maps and get sharper on harder ones, so the game still needs you.

Map difficulty

Every map has a fixed difficulty. On easier maps zombies have less health and hit softer, there are fewer of them, and only mild special zombies appear. On harder maps the horde is bigger and tougher, every special zombie can show up, elite zombies with extra abilities roll more often, and a lost round pays less or nothing. The reward for winning grows with the difficulty to match.

When you let the game pick a map at random, it starts you on Easy maps, adds Medium maps from rank 8 and Hard maps from rank 15. Extreme maps are never picked at random: you play them only by choosing them. A map you pick yourself is always yours to play, whatever your rank.

A win pays the tier's rate for each minute of the map's expected round length (a faster win pays for the time played). The maps guide describes each map and its objectives.

Playing co-op online

Multiplayer puts you on our game server with other players, up to 25 per room. Zombies are always AI, and empty slots are filled with AI survivors. From the multiplayer menu you can join the always-open official room, pick a room from the list of public servers, or create your own: choose a name, a map and the player limit, and whether it is listed or private. Every room has a 6-character room code. Friends can type the code to join, or you can copy an invite link that opens the game straight into your room, private rooms included.

Between rounds the room sits in a lobby, where everyone votes for the next map and can visit the Store to change their loadout. When half the players are ready, a 30-second countdown starts; when everyone is ready it drops to 3 seconds. Players who join while a round is running jump into it.

You can team up in a party of up to 5 players. Each member picks Cash or EXP as their bonus: your own kills pay ×1.5 in the picked currency, and your partymates get a share of your kills too (50% / 40% / 30% / 25% with 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 members). Guests can play online too, but they bring only the starter kit into a multiplayer round; log in to use the gear you bought.

Daily quests, login streak and contracts

The Contracts board in the menu holds 3 daily quests (easy, medium, hard) and one weekly quest. They reset at 8:00 UTC. Progress counts automatically while you play, and finished quests pay Cash and EXP. Logging in on consecutive days builds a login streak that pays more every day of a 7-day cycle, from $500 on day one to $5,000 on day 7, and you can skip a single day without breaking it.

From rank 8 you can also buy contracts: 32 longer challenges such as killing a number of a special zombie type or getting kills with a specific gun. You pay a Cash price up front; finishing pays back ×2 that price plus EXP.