Press Kit.

It's Black Friday. The Vaalmart doors are about to open. Earl has already put a grandmother in the cart corral. You have a van, a roll of tape and a mannequin leg. Your weapon is a handle with store goods taped to it. The handle is a mannequin leg, a lawn flamingo or a six-foot cat tree. The goods are worse. A singing fish plaque. A barrel of cheese balls. An inflatable snowman. A cast iron anvil. Before every fight the van opens and you get one more. Tape it on and it's a new move. Where you tape it is when it fires. Or tape it over a good that's already there, and the two become one thing. You don't get to see what until the tape is on.

You don't swing it. Your hero does. Every good is a move. The fish slaps. The cheese balls fire and ricochet. The snowman spins. The anvil crushes cars. They play in the order you built them, on a loop, until the doors close or you're trampled. There are all kinds of bad shoppers, and no two alike. The Grabber, who is mostly arm. The Loudmouth. The Line Jumper. The Rubbernecker. The Road Hog, who rides a mobility scooter and is coming for your shins. Each one is rolled fresh, with a name and a sale tag. Earl, Slightly Damaged. Kaylee, No Returns. Councilman Bob, Floor Model.

The kills chain and the combo climbs from Deal to Steal to Doorbuster, all the way up to Going Out Of Business. The meter fills and the hero calls a Rollback. Cars pull in. Cars blow up. Then the doors close, you take your haul back to the van, and you build something worse for the next one. A run ends at the regional manager, or when you're out of rain checks. Then the receipt prints, and it tells you how much you saved. Everything in Doorbusters looks like it came off a cheap press at 3 am. Flat inks. Dense halftone dots and lines. A thick black keyline, and a white sticker edge round anything you can hit.