Parasite — survive the prison, escape the shore

About

You spawn in a cell, with a flickering bulb and the cold weight of bedding twisted into rope. Somewhere down the corridor a door is rattling against its frame. You'll knot together the fibres, you'll crack the lock, and when the yard finally opens you'll find the world has gone soft and wet around its edges. Bites carry the parasite. The parasite carries a clock.

Beyond the prison wall is a treeline — then a logging road, a forester's camp, a river crossing, a gas station, coastal pines, and a beach where a dinghy might still be intact. A rescue ship rides at anchor about three minutes out. Get on board and the run is over. Die anywhere in between and you wake back in the cell, vitals reset, one anchor item left for the next thief who passes through.

PvP is always on. Trade is dangerous. Named NPCs remember murder. Total run length is one to three focused hours, alone or with up to twenty-four other strangers sharing the same haunted coastline.

How to play

Controls

Input	Action
`W` `A` `S` `D`	Move (8-directional)
`Left Shift`	Sprint (drains stamina)
`Mouse left`	Melee swing — or fire while aiming
`Mouse right`	Aim (precision reticle for ranged weapons)
`E`	Interact — talk, open doors, pick up loot
`Tab`	Inventory grid
`M`	Map
`Enter`	Chat (Esc to cancel)
`V`	Proximity voice (push-to-talk)
`F1`–`F4`	Quick emotes
`Esc`	Pause / back out of menus

Reloading is automatic when a magazine runs dry and you have matching ammo.

Survival rules

Infection is a 2-minute clock. A bite has a 15% chance to expose you. Once exposed, find antiseptic + antibiotic + a bandage and apply all three before the timer runs out.
Eat to keep your HP cap. Hunger below 25% caps your maximum health.
Bullets are loud. A gunshot raises a 30-tile alarm for the local horde. Melee is the default; firearms are emergency tools.
Killing named NPCs marks you. Every named NPC on the server will refuse you and attack on sight. The mark persists until you die.

Scoring

Each completed run scores on kills, accuracy, items picked up, and quests unlocked — minus damage taken, shots fired, and time spent. Killing named NPCs is heavily penalised. The leaderboard shows the top five server-wide; if you fall short, your own row is appended below.

System requirements

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer, 64-bit Intel/AMD. Linux only for v1.

sudo apt install liballegro5.2 liballegro-image5.2 liballegro-audio5.2 \
                 liballegro-acodec5.2 liballegro-ttf5.2 \
                 liballegro-dialog5.2 libcurl4 libsodium23 tar curl

The tarball ships a check_deps.sh script — run it after install to confirm every library is on the dynamic linker's path.

Quickstart

Download parasite-v1.0.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz.
Extract: tar xzf parasite-v1.0.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz && cd parasite-v1.0.1-linux-x86_64
Run: ./parasite_client for solo, or ./parasite_client --multiplayer --host=mittonvillage.com:7777 for the public server.

On first launch the client fetches ~24 MB of assets over HTTPS and verifies them with SHA-256. Subsequent launches are offline-safe.