How long can you hold the block?
John Street is purple and it has always been purple. Lamb Block is not from here. They come up the alleys in white wool, wave after wave, and they do not stop coming — so the only question the game asks is how long you can hold the street before they take it. Every one you put down pays, and between waves you spend what you made at the trap. There is no level to reach and nothing to escape to. There is just the next wave.
STORY & LORE
The block
Four blocks of John Street, a road down the middle, sidewalks either side, and alleys cut through to the service roads at the back. Everything is purple — the lights, the tags on the shutters, the cars. The alleys are how Lamb Block get in and they are also how you get away, so learning to run the loop instead of backing into a doorway is most of staying alive.
Lamb Block
Head to toe in white wool, hoods up, faces you never quite see. They walk at you rather than around you and there are always more of them than there were a second ago. The rams wear the horns on the outside and come at a sprint. The shepherds hang back with a crook and throw from range. Every fifth wave the Shepherd King comes up the street himself, in gold, and he does not walk any faster for being hit.
The cars
Nobody on John Street drives forwards. Four lowriders reverse up and down the carriageway all night with their reverse lights leading, leaning on the horn, and they do not brake for you or for anybody in wool. Getting out of the way is your problem. Not getting out of the way is worth a bonus.
HOW IT PLAYS
The waves
Wave one is nine of them. It grows every time, and the mix sours as it does: woolbacks from wave two, shepherds from three, rams from four, and the King on every fifth. They trickle in from the alley mouths and the ends of the street rather than appearing in front of you, and there is a cap on how many can be on the block at once so it stays a fight rather than a wall.
Cash
Everyone you put down drops cash and sometimes ammunition, and clearing a wave pays a bonus on top that grows with the wave number. Drop several without letting the chain lapse and the multiplier climbs. A car doing the work for you pays half again.
The trap
Between waves the trap opens — four guns beyond the one you started with, a vest, a patch-up and a resupply. You keep everything you buy for the rest of the night, and you can carry all five at once and switch with the number keys or the wheel. Press B to open it again while the gap lasts.
What you carry
The .38 is what you had on you: six shots, slow, and it hits harder than it has any right to. The Mac sprays. The Sweeper throws eight pellets and pumps between shots. The Deuce goes through wool. The Chopper holds seventy-five. Damage falls off with range on all of them, so a shotgun at the end of the street is a waste of a shell.
Taking hits
No health bar. The edges of the screen redden as they get through, and a vest takes the first of it with a blue cast of its own. Clear a wave untouched and it is worth noting; you will not do it often.
Who Lamb Block actually are
Everyone out there is in white — that is the whole point of them — but underneath it they are different people. Heights and builds vary, and so does the jacket: a puffer with baffles across it, a hoodie, a long shearling, a zip-up tracksuit top with the stripes down the arms. Some have their face covered with a white bandana, some have the hood pulled forward so you get two eyes and nothing else, some are not hiding at all. Caps, rope chains, bats, lengths of chain, a pistol held low. One in fifty is wearing something nobody else on the street is. None of it changes what they do — a lamb is a lamb — it changes whether a crowd of them reads as a crowd.
GALLERY
LAMB BLOCK
| Who | Health | Speed | Pays | From | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lamb | 26 | 1.55 | $45 | Wave 1 | Walks at you. There are a lot of them. |
| Woolback | 78 | 1.00 | $90 | Wave 2 | Slow, and soaks a magazine. |
| Shepherd | 52 | 1.05 | $110 | Wave 3 | Hangs back at range and throws. |
| Ram | 44 | 2.45 | $80 | Wave 4 | Horns out, and quicker than you. |
| BOSS: Shepherd King | 900 | 0.92 | $900 | Every 5th | Gold horns. Throws hard and often. |
WHAT YOU CAN CARRY
| Gun | Price | Damage | RPM | Mag | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The .38 | — | 34 | 150 | 6 | What you had on you. |
| The Mac | $900 | 15 | 900 | 32 | Sprays. Hold it down. |
| Sweeper | $1600 | 16 x8 | 80 | 6 | Eight pellets, and a pump between shots. |
| The Deuce | $2600 | 78 | 260 | 20 | Hits through wool. |
| Chopper | $4200 | 26 | 700 | 75 | Seventy-five in the drum. |
THE REST OF THE TRAP
| Item | Price | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Vest | $800 | +50 armour, and it takes the hit before you do |
| Patch up | $500 | Back to full health |
| Resup | $600 | Fills every gun you are carrying |
VERSION HISTORY
- Genre moved from Shooting to Shooting › FPS. Categories are two levels now — overarching genres with sub-genres beneath them — so this is a more precise shelf rather than a different one: the game still appears under Shooting.
- Phone controls. The aiming in this game is a mouse delta read under pointer lock, and pointer lock does not exist on a handset — so an on-screen D-pad would have moved you and aimed nothing. It now carries the touch rig instead: a floating thumbstick on the left that sends the game its own movement keys, and a look surface on the right that drives the camera directly. The manifest gained `mobile` and `touch`, without which the rig would have rendered nothing at all. Not yet phone-VERIFIED — that still wants a human and a real handset.
- RELOAD and SHOP get real buttons — both were keyboard-only, so a finger had no way to reach either between waves.
- Phone fit, completed. The title screen is a centred flex column, and on a phone frame its content was taller than the box — so the overflow spilled equally past BOTH edges, slicing the top off the title and the bottom off the button, with nothing scrollable to reach either. It now scrolls, and the centring is done with auto margins so it still centres when there is room and the top stays reachable when there is not. Verified clean at 844x390, 390x844 and desktop.
- Lamb Block are people now. They were a lump of wool with legs and a dark hole where a face goes; everything is hung off a human frame — hips, shoulders wider than the waist, a neck, a head with a face in it — and the wool goes on top of that, which is what makes a hood read as a hood and a puffer read as a coat.
- And they are not one figure repeated. Builds and heights vary, there are four different white jackets, faces are covered or not, and they carry bats, chains, pistols and caps. A crowd coming down John Street reads as a crowd.
- The gun in your hands was the same set of bars with the same numbers for every weapon, which is why a snub .38 came out the length of a carbine and both hands were off the bottom of the screen. Each one has its own profile now — where the barrel stops, where the grip hangs, whether there is a stock at all — and it is framed so the whole weapon and the hands holding it are in shot. The .38 has a six-round cylinder that turns, the Sweeper has a pump that rides the stroke, the Chopper has its drum.
- The HUD is gold nameplates with a bevel and a hard shadow, chain where a divider would be, a numbered rack for what you are carrying and a segmented bar for what is left of you — rather than thin text floating on the picture with nothing holding it down.
- Rebuilt from HIK: Hero John Street into an endless wave survival game on John Street. The old build was a grid maze with wandering enemies and an exit; this has no exit, only the next wave.
- The map is a street rather than a maze — road, centre line, sidewalks, blocks of buildings with alleys cut through to service roads at the back, so there is always a loop to run.
- Lamb Block: five types including the Shepherd King on every fifth wave, drawn with real proportions in white wool over dark trackpants.
- Five guns bought from the trap between waves, carried all at once, with damage falling off over range; plus a vest, a patch-up and a resupply.
- Purple streetlights cast real coloured pools through a light grid, with warm spill from the windows that are still on. There is a sky instead of a ceiling.
- Four lowriders reverse up and down the street all night and will run over anybody, including you.
- New renderer: the world is drawn into a fixed-size buffer and upscaled, and the sprite layer backs its resolution off as the window grows. Locked 60fps at 1280x720 and 1920x1080 with no dropped frames.
- Hand-cut street lettering for every readout, nine achievements, pause on ESC, and damage shown as a closing red vignette rather than a bar.
- Desktop only.