THE MANUAL
The GRIFT guide.
Four chapters: how to start, how to read San Verano, how the economy works, and what to make of it. Everything here describes the build that is live; where a system is simulated or still local, it says so.
GRIFT never starts a transaction. A wallet signs one message to prove it is yours; nothing moves. A claim in the Stock Room is simulated in this pass and the sheet says SIMULATED; the kiosk market is the city's own, marked SIMULATED; the casino settles LOCAL.
Start here
Free play, wallet connection and entering San Verano
Two doors, no screen between either and the city
- PLAY GRIFT starts the game for anyone. The landing goes and the game's own PLAY is pressed for you. No wallet is asked for on this door.
- CONNECT WALLET is optional. A Robinhood Chain wallet (any EIP-6963 wallet) signs one message and gets a card; the door becomes PLAY GRIFT with your address on it. What the wallet owns follows you in.
- A returning connected player is restored from the card: no popup, no signature.
- You can connect later from the pause sheet, the locker, the fitting room, OFFBOOK or the Stock Room terminal. Connecting never reloads the game.
Your player follows the wallet
- Connected, your player is kept against your wallet address, so the same wallet on another machine — or in a private window — is the same player. Connect, and your character, cash and unlocks come back.
- Exactly what is kept, and nothing else: your character and how they look, your name, your cash, your level, what you are wearing, what you have unlocked, your last waypoint, and your settings.
- What is never kept: no email, no IP address, no signature, no key, no balance, and nothing your wallet has done anywhere else. The game never asks for a transaction and never holds anything that could authorise one.
- The chain is Robinhood Chain (chain id 4663) and the token is $GRIFT, an ERC-20 on it. One wallet, one signature: the wallet you sign in with is the wallet whose $GRIFT balance is read, and reading it costs no second signature.
- No $GRIFT contract is deployed yet, so tiers are off and holder skins and rooms stay locked for everyone. Nothing in the game will ever ask you to buy it, and the game never sends a transaction.
- Your balance is read on the server, over the chain's own RPC, after you sign — never in your browser, and never stored. Tiers are just a number compared against a threshold: 1,000 $GRIFT for holder, 100,000 for whale.
- Your browser keeps a copy too, so the game opens instantly and still plays when you are offline. If the two disagree, the one saved most recently wins.
- Playing without a wallet changes none of this — a default player is saved in this browser alone, and nothing is sent anywhere.
- Disconnect and the wallet's player stays where it is, against that address, for the next time it connects.
Your first minute
- You spawn on foot in STANDARD, the designed default. The start screen (the suspects, the controls) is one menu away: P pauses.
- E at a car takes it. E at a shop door robs it. E at a venue door walks in.
- Walk into a yellow beam to start a mission; the type rotates each time.
- M is the map. The M totems at the kerb mark metro entrances; the freeway loop rings the core.
- The world runs on its own clock: a day is about half an hour, sessions open at dusk, and it may rain.
| Keys | What they do |
|---|
| W A S D | Move · Drive · Fly |
| Mouse · L-Click | Look and aim · Shoot. Hold to aim and fire. |
| R-Click | Hold to web-swing · Tap to zip up. Hold W while swinging to build speed, release at the front of the arc to fly. |
| Space · Shift | Jump / Heli up · Sprint / Nitro / Heli down |
| F · Q · C · T | Punch combo or air web-dash · Web-shot (again to yank) · Super-jump · Trampoline |
| E | Enter, take, rob |
| 1–6 · Tab | Weapons · Hold for the armory wheel, tap for the next weapon |
| V · Z | Emotes on foot; in a car the camera: chase / close / interior · REX attacks |
| R · O · N | Radio · Cruise control · Horn; held on foot, wait and skip time |
| M · P · G · L | Map · Pause · Screenshot · Legend board |
| H · B | Start the arena at the stadium · Buy property under a green beam; bail out of the seaplane |
Read the city
Districts, subway, venues and key locations
Nine districts
- Downtown — towers, lobbies, and nowhere to park.
- Finance — one street of glass and a very quiet lobby. The Stock Room is here.
- Mid-rise — four to eight floors of everything at once.
- Old Town — brick, awnings, and the market that never moved.
- The Flats — low, wide, and mostly parking; the metro surfaces here.
- The Docks — sheds, yards, and a fight behind one of them.
- Stadium — a bowl, its car parks, and the bars that feed it.
- The Hills — switchbacks, a lookout, and a sign you can see from downtown.
- The Beach — sand, a boardwalk, a pier, and a marina that never sleeps.
The subway keeps running
- The metro runs underground through the core and surfaces on a viaduct in the ring. It runs on its own schedule whether you are there or not.
- An M totem at the kerb marks every entrance; the map and the minimap carry the same marks. DOWNTOWN CENTRAL is the core stop; FLATS is the elevated one.
- Stand behind the platform edge, board when the doors open, ride to any stop, walk the length of the train if you like. A rider left aboard at the end of the line is put off onto the platform.
- Above ground: the freeway loop with its slips and signs, robotaxis and taxis, a helicopter, a seaplane, a balloon ride, and the web between the towers.
Venues you can walk into
- THE STOCK ROOM — the exchange floor in Finance: the vault wall, the board, the terminal on the pit podium, four monitors under the gallery. THE GALLERY upstairs is a whale-tier door.
- LAST CALL — the bar: stage, booths, a pool table. THE BACK ROOM, through the alley door, is a holder-tier door.
- IRON CORNER — the boxing gym by day, the fight club by night.
- OFFBOOK — the store: the current drop on six mannequins, a counter and a mirror.
- PALM CASINO — blackjack and the tables. Settlement is LOCAL: chips, not chain.
- Plus the stadium arena (H), the shops you can rob, the pier and the marina.
Things worth knowing
- The kerb totem outside the Stock Room reads the chain: block height, gas, your linked wallet and tier. When the link is down it says LINK OFFLINE.
- The jumbotron on the plaza carries the same line when the read is live, and the news when it is not.
- Twenty hidden packages sit on rooftops. You find them by swinging up high.
- A green beam over a building means it is for sale (B).
- Moods: a session rolls its weather and light;
?mood=NEON_NIGHT and friends pin one.
Learn the economy
Earnings, Stock Room, assets, cosmetics and ownership
Cash LOCAL
- Your cash is on the HUD. Missions, heists, stylish moves that land, dailies and a robbed till pay into it.
- The ATM banks it in $500 steps and the bank pays 2% a day. Both are the city's own money: they live on this machine, not onchain.
- The kiosk outside the Stock Room quotes real tickers on a simulated market. Buy a share with the number keys, sell it back. Positions are LOCAL and the plate says so.
The Stock Room RH CHAIN
- The room reads a real vault wallet on Robinhood Chain (chain 4663) that holds Robinhood Stock Tokens. The board shows what is in it; the terminal shows what was allocated to you.
- Connect a Robinhood Chain wallet at the terminal to see your rewards and your portfolio. A claim in this pass is simulated: no token moves, no hash is invented, the sheet says SIMULATED.
- The chain line everywhere in the room is a live read: block height and gas from the public RPC, tagged LIVE, STALE or OFFLINE by its age.
Cosmetics and the drop OWNED BY THE WALLET
- OFFBOOK sells the current drop: six pieces on six mannequins. Try one on for free; owning it binds it to your Robinhood Chain wallet, and it follows you into every session.
- The locker holds the collection: EQUIPPED, OWNED, the drop, HOLDER and LOCKED pieces, each with one action.
- A purchase in this pass goes through the mocked adapter and says so on the sheet. Nothing here initiates a transaction.
Tiers and token gates VERIFIED
- The token is $GRIFT, an ERC-20 on Robinhood Chain (4663) — the same chain you sign in on. Your balance is read on the server, over the chain's own RPC, and graded NONE, HOLDER or WHALE. It costs no second signature: the card your sign-in already earned is what the balance is read against. The balance shown is the read, with its age.
- No $GRIFT contract is deployed yet, so every tier reads NONE and the holder doors and pieces stay locked for everyone. Nothing here will ask you to buy it.
- HOLDER opens THE BACK ROOM at LAST CALL and the holder pieces. WHALE opens THE GALLERY above the Stock Room floor. A locked door says one line and never asks you to buy.
- The doctrine: trade, never earn. No yield, no automated buying, no token paid out as a reward. The game never sends a transaction — where a claim is live, you send it yourself, from your own wallet.
What $GRIFT is for NOT LIVE
- City cash and $GRIFT are different money. Everything the city sells is bought with cash you earned by playing, and a player who never holds a token can play all of GRIFT. The token is optional and stays optional.
- It buys ownership, never power. The one utility that is switched on is claiming a piece you already own in the city onto the chain, held by your own wallet: 250 $GRIFT, of which 80% is burned and 20% funds the next drop. Token-priced drops, personalisation and city services are built and switched off. None of it is a weapon, damage, health, armour, a faster car or a way past the police.
- Nothing about it is live. Claiming today shows you exactly what a claim would cost and then does nothing: no token moves, none is destroyed, no transaction is sent. Mainnet needs a deliberate configuration and cannot be switched on by an environment guess.
- No burn figure is shown until a real one confirms. Destroyed supply only counts a confirmed mainnet transaction, verified against its receipt; a testnet burn and a previewed claim are counted on their own lines and never added to it.
- The whole design is written down in docs/token-utility.md. The $GRIFT UTILITY sheet, from the ledger, shows the same thing in the game.
Make your move
Crime, heat, transport, reputation and progression
Crime and heat
- Stars are heat. Two bring SVPD drones, four bring SWAT, five bring a tank. The Stealth suit cools heat faster; so does getting out of sight.
- Rob a store from inside it. Jack a car at the door. Take a mission from a yellow beam; the casino has a heist of its own, in through the hatch.
- CHAOS on the HUD is the city's read of you. It climbs with what you break and settles when you stop.
Reputation and level
- Rep is earned by what you pull off. The tiers: NOBODY, KNOWN, FAMOUS, CITY LEGEND, ICON. The HUD names yours.
- LVL is your level; dailies (DAILY on the HUD) set a small goal each day, like three hidden packages.
- The arms dealer opens with rep before money; the most-wanted wall lists who the city is after.
Transport
- Cars have doors, interiors and an interior camera (V). Damage is real and shows on the body.
- The metro is free and always running. The freeway loop is the fast way round the ring. Taxis and robotaxis run the streets; the robotaxi has opinions.
- The helicopter, the seaplane and the balloon are where you find them. The skydive beacon is outside the Spire.
Owning your place
- Buy property under a green beam and it is yours.
- Start from a body (STANDARD, HEAVY, SPRINTER, BRAWLER, COLOSSUS, LEAPER), then change anything and give it your own name. There is no cast to pick from: the character is yours, and it is saved for next time.
- On a phone: open the menu and Add to Home Screen. It installs.