A stage in FOXFIRE is a mission, not a level in a corridor. Each one is launched on its own from the hangar, carries its own briefing, and ends when the pilot escapes or dies. A run means a single attempt at a single stage. There is no chain to lose halfway through.
That structure exists because the fiction is a refugee fleet, and the pilot is the thing it sends out alone. The fleet stays where it is. The recon does not come home with a map of five places at once.
What a stage has to earn
Every main stage has to be strong in two dimensions before it ships. It needs a mission and encounter structure nothing else has, and it needs a navigation problem nothing else sets. One without the other is a reskin.
Narrative supports both and substitutes for neither. A stage with a gorgeous premise and the same flying as the last one does not get built. It is the rule that keeps the belt from becoming a jungle with grey rocks in it.
| # | Stage | The place | The problem it sets |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Asteroid Belt | Deep solo recon into the Kepler belt | Solid rock that blocks, breaks and pays |
| 2 | Viridian Storm | Low orbit over an abandoned jungle planet | A moving safe zone in a lightning field |
| 3 | Ark Heist | A pirate stronghold inside an ancient Ark wreck | Rooms, doors and an escape budget you spend |
| 4 | Void Rendezvous | Deep space that should be lifeless | Darkness, mirrors and unreliable perception |
| 5 | Return to Eden | The ancestral home | Not the homecoming the fleet was promised |
Stage 1: Asteroid Belt
An 18 minute solo recon to decide whether the Kepler belt will hide a fleet. The asteroids are foreground, not wallpaper: they block movement, take weapon damage, split when destroyed and stay broken for the rest of the run. Flying into one is punished and breaking one pays. Full guide in the asteroid field.
Stage 2: Viridian Storm
An FTL jump straight into low orbit over a hive colony planet, arriving to find the storm front already there. The stage clock does not start at launch. It starts when the pilot reaches the eye, a drifting pocket of calm that breathes, goes unstable and has to be found through lightning that aims at where the ship is going rather than where it has been. It runs longer than Stage 1, and it is the hardest thing we have shipped.
Stage 3: Ark Heist
A room-based heist inside a pirate stronghold embedded in an ancient Ark wreck, for the navigation charts that reach Eden. The station map is fixed and learnable while the interiors reroll every run, so pilots remember how rooms connect without memorising where the crates landed. The jump drive inverts too: it is a budget spent by crossing bulkheads rather than a meter that fills. Cross too many and it fires whether the job is done or not.
It also keeps what you learned. Discovered rooms, landmarks and secret walls persist between attempts, on the logic that the pilot may fail but command keeps the chart.
Stage 4: Void Rendezvous
The fleet's deep space rendezvous on the route home. The region should be lifeless and the long range scanners disagree. Three escalating regions attack the pilot's trust in what the instruments show: a lightless trench where the ship only illuminates a forward cone and some of the beacons are lures attached to something larger, a fractured mirror plane where reflections run late or early, and a final region where reality stops rendering correctly.
Stage 5: Return to Eden
The briefing calls it a formality and an honour. It is neither. Earth is where the fleet's hope goes to die and where the truth about the animals' origin is waiting, along with the creator responsible for it. The arc that started with losing a home ends with understanding one.
What carries and what resets
Death costs the build, not the account. Level, experience, weapons, passives and the credits picked up mid flight belong to the run and go with it. Banked credits, ship unlocks, wingmates, boss trophies and permanent hangar upgrades stay.
Permanent progression is finite on purpose. It exists to open up breadth, ships and build variety rather than to sell a stat treadmill, which means a fully upgraded expert will eventually find the standard game comfortable. That is the intended outcome, not a balance failure. The long game is the Heat ladder, assembled from optional challenge modifiers that stack.
Stages get harder through authored parameters rather than bespoke code: run length, spawn rate ceilings, environmental pressure and boss rules. Stage 1's boss is optional and the ship escapes without it. Stage 3's boss jams the jump drive, so beating it is the only way the stage clears at all.
What is playable today
Stage 1 is complete and is what the Steam demo ships. Stage 2 is playable and in its polish tail: built, not yet fully balanced, with known work remaining on the boss. Stage 3 has been in production since September and currently has procedural rooms, traps and the escape chase running, with enemy population and the final boss still to come.
Stages 4 and 5 are designed and written and have no runtime. We are saying that plainly because a finished script is not a finished stage, and a roadmap that blurs the two is a roadmap nobody can use.
Questions
How many stages does FOXFIRE have?
Five are planned, and they run from the Kepler asteroid belt back to Earth. The Steam demo covers Stage 1. Early Access ships with Stages 1, 2 and 3 complete. Stages 4 and 5 arrive on the road to 1.0.
What counts as a run in FOXFIRE?
One attempt at one stage. Stages are launched individually from the hangar as separate missions, so a run is not a gauntlet through all five. Dying sends you back to the hangar, not to the start of a chain.
Do you lose everything when you die in FOXFIRE?
No. The build you assembled inside the run resets: level, weapons, passives and the upgrades you picked. Credits, ship unlocks, wingmates and permanent hangar upgrades stay. Progression is deliberately finite rather than an endless stat treadmill.
How do you unlock the later stages?
By clearing the one before it. Stage 2 opens when Stage 1 is beaten, and Stage 3 opens on the first Stage 2 boss kill. Until then the later missions sit on the board marked classified.
Which FOXFIRE stages can you actually play today?
Stage 1 is complete and is what the demo ships. Stage 2 is playable and in its polish tail. Stage 3 is in active production. Stages 4 and 5 are designed and written but have no runtime yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.