Race the ending.
The pawn always reaches the End Stop. You play cards to make sure that when it arrives, the ending has changed.
Setup your deck
Solo: deal 7 cards. Draw 1 card whenever the pawn reaches a new step.
Choose your player name
No free text names. Pick three words, or recover your saved profile.
Recover profile
Selected case
Loading case files...
The app will tell you when to draw. Keep the deck beside your phone or screen.
Clinic loadout
Choose a room and staff before the run. These change the shape of play, not just difficulty.
Intake Room: no modifier. Stable baseline.
Choose a case
Campaigns
Story campaigns
Campaigns are curated case-file novellas. They use the same deck, but the story shapes which cards are removed, restored or locked. The free pilot tests Threadlight, character states and story-shaped deck preparation; later campaigns can unlock through PayPal without hiding global one-shot cases.
No run active
Choose a case and start a run. Once it begins, this screen becomes the whole play surface.
Profile
Loading profile...
Clinic Board
Build the places that keep people reachable
Afterlight is earned by completing cases. Spend it to influence open community files, unlock deeper case archives, and open new rooms or staff. These do not make the End Stop disappear, they change what support is available at the table.
World condition
Sales pledge
80% of sales are pledged to suicide prevention work. 20% keeps Step Away running and fresh.
Unlock path
Spend Afterlight
Rooms
Staff
How the deck and app split the work
The deck is the tactile intervention layer. The app is the living layer. Cards handle pressure, suits, powers and reflection at the table. The Clinic, Afterlight, locked cases and weekly events stay inside the app, so you do not need extra clinic cards around your phone.
Why this exists
The app is not just a scorekeeper. It is the living part of Step Away: cases lock, stories accumulate, weekly events shift the world, and your clinic records the kind of interventions you tend to build.
Afterlight Ledger
Global case progress
Locked case outcomes
Recent results
Guide
Use this as your in-app rulebook. Open the section you need, then go back to the table.
1. Setup
- Create or recover your player profile.
- Choose a case file and timer.
- Shuffle the 52 core cards. For Risk Event Mode, also shuffle in both Jokers.
- Deal: solo 7 cards, 2 players 6 each, 3-4 players 5 each.
- Keep the rest as the draw pile. Jokers are optional official events: Fracture and Resilience.
- Multiplayer is open-table co-op: players may talk, show hands and contribute cards to the table action.
2. What the suits mean
3. Moment flow
- When the pawn reaches a new moment, draw 1 card each.
- If a crisis appears, resolve it during the pause or let it hit.
- Tap Continue to start the live moment.
- Before the action, the table may Dig Deep once.
- Take one table action: Play One, Weave Two, invoke a face-card power, or Steady.
- After acting, wait for the next moment. Undo is available until the pawn moves.
4. Play One and Weave Two
Play One: choose one card from hand. Matching the primary need is best. Matching the secondary need is still useful. Off-rhythm cards are weaker.
Weave Two: use two numbered cards, 2-10. Add their values, cap at 10, then choose either card's suit. Totals above 10 are legal and simply cap to 10.
Example: 7♥ + 6♣ = 13, capped to 10. It can resolve as Held or Helped depending on what the moment needs.
5. Dig Deep
Once per moment, before your table action, discard one card to search for another route. Pressure +1. Reveal cards from the draw pile equal to the card's Dig value. Keep 1, discard the rest physically.
6. Face-card powers
J, Q, K and A can be played normally, used for Dig Deep, or used to invoke their printed suit power. Each suit power can be activated once per run.
7. Crisis routes
A crisis is not a normal action. It appears during a pause and asks the table to spend cards from one suit to hit an exact total. The most thematically fitting route usually has the lowest target. Off-theme routes cost more cards.
Aces count as 1. Number cards count as printed. J/Q/K count as 10. You cannot overshoot the target.
8. Risk Event Mode, Jokers
Optional. Shuffle both Jokers into the deck. Red Joker is Fracture: all players discard their hands and redraw to hand count, Pressure rises, and the app does not know which unknown cards were lost. Black Joker is Resilience: turn the played pile face down, place it on top of the draw deck without shuffling, reopen spent cards and suit powers in the app, then remove that Joker from play.
Risk Event Mode earns extra Afterlight whether the Jokers appear or not, because the deck itself is harsher. If Fracture empties the deck late, the table may have to Steady, talk, and hope what was already built is enough.
9. Clinic and Afterlight
Afterlight is earned by completed runs. It is based on outcome, score band, timer pressure, anchors, crisis handling and the current world condition. Open one-shots leave 1 Afterlight on the community outcome when eligible, deeper archive files can be unlocked with Afterlight, and rooms/staff unlock slowly as your lifetime progress grows.
10. Campaigns
Campaigns use the same core rules, but the campaign file shapes the deck. Before a chapter, the app shows which cards are out of the deck and why. Chapter outcomes restore or lock specific cards, change named character states and award Threadlight. Replays cost Threadlight so failure matters without creating a death spiral. The first campaign is a free pilot; future campaigns can use PayPal unlocks.
11. Support
Support links are here without interrupting play.
