Ebbtide Game Gameplay
Every confirmed gameplay system in the Ebbtide game, from the official Steam listing — real-time carrier command, base building, and a hive-mind horde.
The six pillars of play
The map is the battlefield
Scroll into any street on the operations map and it becomes the live battlefield — no loading screen. Scroll back out and the fight keeps running. There are no separate missions and no hidden auto-resolve: every soldier lost, zombie killed, and building destroyed carries back to the map.
A city under siege
The campaign opens in Los Angeles, from the Hollywood Hills to the Port of LA. The city's 15 districts slide from Hold to Crisis to Lost in real time. You can pause the map or run it at up to 4× speed — and you cannot save everyone, so you decide who gets pulled out first.
Command real forces
Issue hold, delay, and withdraw orders to National Guard, LAPD, and LA County Sheriff's units, and call in Marines from Camp Pendleton. Truck and helicopter convoys move supplies, troops, and refugees — and extract units cut off behind the lines.
Take direct control
Set squad formations and combat stances at the strategy level — or press TAB to take direct control of a single soldier, tank, or helicopter and fight the moment yourself.
A horde that fights back
The dead are steered by the Nexus, a hive mind that ambushes convoys, cuts roads, besieges bases, and hunts stranded units. Zombies pile up to climb walls and rooftops, cling to low-hovering helicopters, and every soldier the horde kills rises again. You always get a warning before an attack — enough time to reroute, retreat, or call fire support. Fog of war means you only see hordes inside your forces' line of sight.
Build your own base
Choose where to dig in and raise a forward operating base: HESCO and concrete walls, gates, and scaffolding, with gun nests, CIWS, mortar pits, an ammo depot, a fuel point, and lighting. Materials arrive by hooklift truck or helicopter sling — and the horde hunts your convoys.
Confirmed vehicles and aircraft
- Tanks, Bradley IFVs, LAVs, and Humvees
- Apache and Viper attack helicopters
- Black Hawk transports — fast-rope troops onto rooftops
Unit stats, costs, and unlock trees: to be confirmed at launch.
Fire support you can call in
From the map or inside the battle — but ship magazines are finite, and heavy weapons bring buildings down.
- M777 howitzers and HIMARS rockets
- Destroyer naval guns and Tomahawk cruise missiles
- Carrier-launched F/A-18 sorties
- F-15E, F-35B, and A-10 air strikes
- AC-130J gunship support
- MQ-9 drone orbits
From Los Angeles to the world
What you bring to the Port of LA becomes your starting force aboard the Ark. From there the campaign opens up: choose which regions to help, resupply at friendly ports, rescue pilots and specialists you cannot train yourself, grow the fleet with allied warships, and hunt the Nexus's hidden command nodes.
Official footage: from the LA operations map straight into the battle.
AI content disclosure
In a developer announcement dated October 21, 2026, ProjectAlive published the Steam AI-content disclosure for the Ebbtide game. Per that announcement, AI tools were used in areas including the soundtrack, voices, audio, art, 3D models, and translation — with no in-game AI generation. The full disclosure text lives on the Steam store page; we summarize rather than reprint it.
Gameplay FAQ
What kind of game is the Ebbtide game?
Does the Ebbtide game have base building?
Can you control units directly in the Ebbtide game?
Is Ebbtide gameplay information final?
Unofficial fan wiki. Not affiliated with or endorsed by ProjectAlive, the developer of the Ebbtide game. Vehicle and weapon names are mentioned as listed on the official Steam page.