01 · Introduction & Setup

THE MARK — a round-based noir sniper game by Black Syntax. Build v1.0.4. You are the Contractor: study the route, pick the perch, take one shot, and vanish before the net closes. One shot. One exit.

Platforms: PC (Steam) first, mobile to follow · Single-player · Setting: Morrow City, 1991

HEALTH & SAFETY

⚠ READ BEFORE PLAYING

Play in a well-lit room, sit back from the screen, and take a 10–15 minute break every hour. Stop immediately if you feel dizziness, altered vision, or disorientation. A small number of people may experience seizures triggered by flashing lights or patterns; consult a doctor before playing if you or a family member has a history of seizures.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

MINIMUM

OS: Windows 10 64-bit · CPU: dual-core 2.4 GHz · RAM: 4 GB · GPU: any OpenGL 3.3 / DirectX 11 card · 2 GB storage · Mouse required

RECOMMENDED

OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit · CPU: quad-core 3.0 GHz · RAM: 8 GB · GPU: dedicated card, 2 GB VRAM · 2 GB storage · sound on for the police band

The Mark runs on the Godot engine and is light on hardware — the low-poly "Another World" art is deliberate, not a limitation.

INSTALLATION

1Wishlist and purchase The Mark on Steam (coming soon). Add it to your library.

2Install through the Steam client. It will verify the files automatically.

3Launch once to generate your settings and save file. Turn sound on — the police scanner is half the game.

4Set your scope sensitivity in Options, then run the Prologue ("The School"). It teaches every control as you play.

MAIN MENU

PLAY

Story campaign or endless Challenge.

LEADERBOARDS

Best times and streaks, per mode.

CONFIG

Remap keys; tune scope, audio, palettes.

QUIT

The city keeps its own hours.

02 · Controls & Interface

INPUT MAP

The whole game is three inputs. Everything else is you reading the map, the light, and the band.

LMBmove / fire

RMBscope / reposition

WHEELzoom (3× / 6× / 12×)

SHIFTdouble-click = sprint

ESCpause / menu

▸ TIP

During ENGAGEMENT, right-click drops you back to the map to relocate, then right-click again to scope in and commit. Fire and relocate — your old perch gets swarmed, not your position.

THE HUD

1 2 3 4

1 Compass tape — your facing in degrees; a gold arrow points toward the Mark when he's off-frame.
2 The reticle — the bullet goes where the reticle is, not where the scope points. The center dot hollows to a ring while the bolt cycles.
3 Range readout — pistol under 35 m, rifle under 90 m, sniper beyond. Spread grows with distance.
4 CHAOS counter — every stray shot and every civilian raises it. At 9 it becomes MANHUNT.

MENU NAVIGATION

Menus are mouse-driven. In PREP, the left column is your entry side and the right column is your rifle — pick both before the countdown, or you're air-dropped onto a random legal side with a default loadout.

ACCESSIBILITY

SCOPE SENSITIVITY SLIDERINVERT SCOPEPER-VOICE VOLUMESUBTITLES (ALWAYS ON)HIGH-CONTRAST HUD COLORS

Every spoken radio line is also printed as a subtitle on its color-coded channel, so the police band is fully playable with sound off. Gameplay colors never change across the five lighting palettes.

03 · Core Gameplay

THE GAME LOOP — THE IDEA DOCTRINE

The Teacher calls it the IDEA doctrine. Every job is four moves.

I · INTEL

Study the map. Route, rooftops, patrols, exits. Pick your entry side and rifle.

D · DEPLOYMENT

Reach your perch. Ladders, alleys, rooftops. Patrols can tail you — don't get touched.

E · ENGAGEMENT

He's walking. The clock is his route. One squeeze. Miss, and he cowers — never vanishes.

A · ABSCOND

75 seconds. Every cop is hunting. Reach a green edge and be a rumor.

MOVEMENT

Single click walks; double-click sprints. Climb cyan wall pads to rooftops and hop between buildings on roof pads. Ladders are climbed hand-over-hand — you, and the cops, are exposed on every climb. There are no teleports. High ground is quiet ground; the street can't look up.

COMBAT & THE CHAOS LADDER

A shot draws every ear toward the noise, but only a clean line of sight turns a patrol into a pursuit. Once anyone is hit, dispatch calls weapons free. Every mistake has a number, and the city adds them up:

Event	Chaos
Any stray shot	+1
Hit a civilian	+2
Every 2 chaos	A fresh wave from the precinct doors
Chaos 9	MANHUNT — "That's ENOUGH."

A loud round makes every following shot harder — chaos adds sway. The Mark never disappears: he panics, sprints to a wall, and cowers, shootable the whole time. The test isn't the miss — it's the correction shot while they close on you.

PROGRESSION

Story mode is a campaign of hand-built, deterministic chapters — the same map serves several contracts, so you learn known ground. Challenge mode is escalating random cities forever: bigger maps, faster Marks, thicker nets, rooftop counter-snipers. A clean escape advances the level.

SAVE SYSTEM

▸ SAVES

Story completion and best times save per contract; Challenge tracks your best streak per theme. Progress is written to your local user-data folder after each round. There is no manual save — the night either happened or it didn't.

04 · World & Lore

SETTING THE STAGE

Morrow City, 1991. A post-industrial city in the hangover after the crash — factories closed, public housing sold off, every government office sharing a lobby with a bank. Payphones, pagers, cassette briefings, and a 56k terminal. No screens give you orders; the horror arrives by mail and modem. Every Mark you're sent is genuinely guilty. Keeping the streets "clean," the suits like to say, mostly means keeping them quiet.

CHARACTERS

THE TEACHER

Your mentor, in the projection booth of a condemned movie house. Teaches you everything, tells you nothing. Then goes quiet.

IRIS

A pirate-radio organizer who hijacks your scanner mid-job to tell you what the file left out.

THE OPERATOR

The voice that delivers contracts through the terminal — a machine that never rises, never asks how it went.

THE POLICE BAND

Every officer on the scanner is a permanent, named character — one voice, one badge, one unit number, night after night. The feed is the threat model. Read it, or get read.

PATROLWalk their beats. Suspicion is a walking tail that wears off — unless they see blood.

CRUISERSRoll in on every chaos wave; brake short and unload. Sirens mean pursuit.

SWAT OVERWATCHRooftop counter-snipers. Flat, patient, zero theater. "Muzzle flash located. Acquiring."

05 · Items & Economy

THE LOADOUT

Two slots, locked at INTEL: a PRIMARY (a rifle) and a SUPPORT (a sidearm or a disguise). You don't get to change your mind on the roof. That's the whole game.

RIFLES — THE TRIANGLE

None of them is the best. Every one is the best at something.

Rifle	Wins at	Bolt	Move	Report
Lightweight	the escape	2.0 s	+25%	65 m (a whisper)
Standard	the follow-up	1.0 s	—	85 m
Heavyweight	the first shot	2.5 s	−25%	200 m (the district)

SIDEARMS & DISGUISES

SILENCED .22 — 8 RDS, HEARD 10 M.45 STOPPER — 5 RDS, LOUDSTILETTO — SILENT, ARM'S REACH

POLICE UNIFORM — WINS THE CORDONINCOGNITO — WINS THE CROWDSHADOW SKILL — WINS THE WAIT

GETAWAY VEHICLES

Some contracts stage a specific boardable car (or a boat on the docks). Board it and you're fully incognito — cops see just a car, and a moving car can't be caught. They have to corner it, or catch it parked.

THE FEE

Each contract carries a fee. A clean, low-chaos exit is worth more than a loud one — chaos is the score, morally and otherwise.

06 · Multiplayer & Social

◆ SINGLE-PLAYER AT LAUNCH

The Mark ships single-player. The systems below are on the roadmap, not in the current build.

SHAREABLE CONTRACTS

The one social feature live today: every Challenge contract emits a plain, shareable contract code. Send a friend the code and they get the exact same city, same terms — beat your time on identical ground.

COMMUNICATION

Planned. For now, compare runs by code and time on the local leaderboards.

GUILDS & CLANS

Planned for a future update.

CODE OF CONDUCT

▸ WHEN MULTIPLAYER ARRIVES

Play the contract, not the person. Cheating, harassment, and exploiting other players will not be tolerated. The Contractor keeps his work quiet — so do we.

07 · Support & Troubleshooting

FAQ

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Questions, bugs, or press: [email protected]

Official site: playthemark.com · Studio: blacksyntax.com

Include your build number (v1.0.4) and, if the game won't launch, your GPU and driver version.

CREDITS

THE MARK — a Black Syntax production. An independent studio building dark, systemic worlds. The Mark is our first contract.