About Umbra
Umbra is a free 3D stealth assassin game for the browser, in the spirit of Hunter Assassin. You guide a hooded assassin through a guarded building and take every target down with a knife. Tap or click where to go, or drag to draw the route, and strike when you are close enough. The catch is that every guard carries a flashlight, and the cone it throws across the floor is the one place you must not be.
Light is the twist. Some rooms are lit by lamps and some are dark, and guards take more than twice as long to notice you in the dark, so the shadows become your paths. A light gem in the corner shows how visible you are at every step. Walls and crates cut the cones off, guards who lose sight of you search where they last saw you, and a body left where a patrol can see it raises the alarm and makes every guard quicker.
There are five kinds of guard: riflemen who walk routes, watchers who sweep a room from a post, shotgunners with a wide cone who charge when they see you, snipers whose laser sight crosses the whole map, and dogs that notice you all the way round, but only up close. They think, too: a guard who sees a friend fall raises the alarm and calls the others, searches sweep the spots around where you were last seen and where you were heading, a guard who stops answering the radio gets checked on, dogs follow your scent trail, nobody fires through a friend, and a sniper holds the laser on you before the shot. Besides the knife you have two tools: a pebble to throw, which pulls a guard off the route to look, and Shadow Step, a quick dash that makes you untouchable for a moment.
The campaign has 50 levels in five districts, The Warehouse, The Mansion, Black Lab, a rainy Night Harbor and The Citadel, and the maps grow as you go, from a 22 by 15 metre warehouse with three guards to a 35 by 24 metre citadel with fifteen. Every level is generated from a fixed seed and played through by a bot with the real rules, so none is impossible. Each gives up to three stars, for clearing it, for never being seen and for beating the par time; targets drop gems that unlock six assassins with their own perks, and your total score goes to a public Top 10. It is an original TabSpawn game drawn with Three.js: the assassin, the guards and their dogs are rigged 3D characters that run, aim, search, slash and fall, the assassin is quick (quicker still in the dark), and you can zoom in to follow the action, with touch controls on phones and a camera that turns the level to fit a portrait screen.
How to play
- Tap or click where you want to go, or drag to draw a route and the assassin follows it. On a keyboard, WASD moves you directly.
- Get close and press Strike (Space, F, the button, or tap the guard). From behind a blow kills; a guard who faces you alert, and any shotgunner, takes two.
- Stay out of the cones: a guard who sees you fills a meter, and a full meter means gunfire. Security cameras sweep rooms and call your position to the guards; strike one to smash it, loudly.
- Watch the cones. Walls and crates block them, and in a dark room a guard takes far longer to notice you.
- Double-tap, or press Space, to Shadow Step a few metres; you hold two. Throw a pebble with right-click, Q or the pebble button to lure a guard.
- You run faster in the dark, and kills chained within a couple of seconds pay a combo bonus. Zoom in with the wheel, Z or a pinch.
- Take down every target. Three stars: clear the level, never be seen, and beat the par time.
Controls
| Click / tap | Move there |
|---|---|
| Drag | Draw a route to follow |
| Space / F / Strike button | Strike (or tap a guard in reach) |
| WASD / arrows | Move directly |
| Double-tap / Shift / E | Shadow Step (towards the cursor) |
| Right-click / Q | Throw a pebble |
| Z / wheel / pinch | Zoom in and follow |
| R | Restart level |
| L | Level select |
| P / Esc | Pause |
| M | Sound on or off |
Tips
- Count a watcher's sweep before you move. They turn slowly, and always in the same order.
- A pebble thrown past a guard turns their back to you. That is the moment to go.
- Strike in corners. A body in the middle of a patrol route will be found, and found bodies make every guard faster to spot you.
- Save Shadow Step for crossing a cone, not for travel. It takes six seconds to recharge.