Ghost Line

What is Ghost Line?

Ghost Line is a two-player online co-op twin-stick shooter that runs inside a browser tab. The setting is Halcyon Bay, a canal megacity under constant rain, where a bodiless AI called RUMOUR is copying itself from brain to brain across four sites. Its trace ends at the Meridian Museum, where a morning net sync would push it across the whole city at once.

The leads are COBALT and EMBER, two full-body cyborg ex-cops from a disbanded unit called Section Null. They reopen their old safehouse, take the boat out to each target, and cut the trace one site at a time.

The design hook is deliberately narrow: a shell that your partner has hacked shatters at your touch. Every enemy, prop and boss in the game is a new way of making that single sentence difficult, which is the mark of a jam project that spent its week on one idea instead of five. Sam and Dallas built it for a game jam, and it is free to play in the browser.

How to play

Each player carries a dart and a shotgun and can swap between them at any moment, so either partner is able to freeze a shell or finish it. The payoff comes from splitting the work. A shell your partner darted shatters in one shotgun blast and refunds a round into your magazine. A shell you darted yourself only cracks. Two players who divide the roles and call targets out loud clear ground far faster than two players who each try to do everything.

For online play, one player presses Host co-op and reads out the room code; the other presses Join co-op and types it in, or opens the invite link instead. The host's tab is the one running the game, so it has to stay open for the session to continue.

Playing alone is supported through a Solo button that drops a bot into the other seat, and the bot can be set up as either a hacker or a finisher. Roles are not locked: COBALT, marked in blue with a chevron, and EMBER, marked in orange with a hexagon, can be swapped in the lobby. Shards, cyberware and boss parts are shared, so progress belongs to the pair rather than to one save file.

Controls

A gamepad is the recommended way in, and any standard controller works; keyboard and mouse are fully supported as well. Click the game window once so it takes the keys and the pad before you start moving.

On a pad, the left stick moves and the right stick aims, the right trigger fires whatever tool is equipped, and the right bumper flips between dart and shotgun. On desktop, WASD moves and the mouse aims, the left button fires, and the right button or Q swaps tools. Reloading sits on X for pad players and R for keyboard players, while the dodge roll is on the left trigger or A with Space or Shift as the keyboard equivalent.

The rest is housekeeping. Y or E operates a station back in the safehouse, Start or Esc opens settings for volume, quality and shake, and holding View or Tab pulls up the run panel. Because the game is online, it never pauses, so agree on a safe corner before either of you opens a menu.

Tips for your first run

A first clear of a mission takes roughly fifteen minutes, and a short rooftop tutorial comes before the mission board in the safehouse unlocks. Spend that tutorial deciding who darts and who finishes, then talk constantly. Calling targets is half the game, so get on a voice call before the first fight rather than after it.

If a join refuses to connect, it is usually the network and not the game: some work and school connections block direct links, so try the other player as host or move to a different network.

Spend shards between missions on cyberware that bolts onto the body, and remember the bosses each have a specific answer.

• Topple LONGLEGS at Lantern Quay by hacking two legs on the same side.
• At Mercy Annex, only the player VEIL is not hunting can see her clearly, so shout her position.
• Halberd Works Bulwarks carry riot shields and can only be hacked from behind.
• Take down the CHORUS think-tanks within three seconds of each other.
• In the museum finale, dart your own hacked partner clean to open RUMOUR's core.

Content and replayability

There are four missions and four bosses, reached through a mission board in the safehouse after the rooftop tutorial. Lantern Quay is a canal market under hanging neon, thick with drone swarms and hacked troopers, and the lights go out halfway through its second fight. Mercy Annex leads into Sunken Plaza, a white-tile cyberbrain clinic where blank shells wake on their cradles and Hounds chase whoever darted last. Halberd Works is a prosthetics factory full of shielded Bulwarks and Relays that freeze every trooper wired to them. The Meridian Museum finale chains exhibit cases of old shells, drops the floor into wireframe for a net dive, and sends RUMOUR through the wrecked shells of the three earlier bosses.

Between runs there is a small economy: shards buy cyberware such as faster darts, larger magazines, a drum mag and a double-barrel. The real replay hook is the end card. Clear the city and each player receives a private line from RUMOUR about the other, drawn from what happened across the campaign, from restores caused to a revive that landed late. Only the recipient sees it, and reading it aloud is optional.

Presentation and performance

The look is low-poly cyberpunk: rain, neon signage and canal water, with silhouettes that stay legible in a busy fight. Readability is treated as a design rule rather than an afterthought. Everything that matters is signalled in blue or orange and reinforced with a shape, so colour-blind players can track threats and partners without relying on hue alone.

Ghost Line runs on three.js in the browser, synthesises its sound effects in the engine, and uses a licensed cyberpunk soundtrack. Chrome or Edge is recommended, Firefox also works, and a GPU-accelerated browser is required. The game scales its own quality down to hold 60 fps, and Settings offers a manual Low option alongside volume, quality and shake controls.

Because sessions are hosted in a player's tab, the host's machine and connection carry the load. That makes the recommended browsers worth following rather than ignoring, and it makes a stable host the single biggest factor in a smooth run.

Who should play it

This is a game for two people who want to talk to each other. The whole skill ceiling sits in coordination, so pairs who enjoy calling positions and covering angles will get far more out of it than players looking for a solo power fantasy. The fifteen-minute mission length suits a short evening session rather than a long campaign binge.

Controller owners have the most natural fit, though keyboard and mouse players lose nothing. Anyone who has struggled with colour-coded UI in fast shooters should find the shape-plus-colour system unusually considerate. Solo players are not shut out, since a bot partner can fill the second seat, but the design is openly aimed at a pair.

Fans of jam-scale projects will appreciate the discipline: four missions, four bosses, one rule, and a gossip-driven ending instead of a loot treadmill. Players who want deep buildcraft or a pause button should look elsewhere, because the systems are lean and the game keeps running while the menus are open.