Hazard Levels Gameplay Guide: Rifts, Loot, Brews & Survival

How the Core Loop Works

Wales Interactive's latest asks you to grab loot and then turn it into cocktails that can make your squad tiny, turn a friend into a toilet, or bring you back from the dead. If you understand the Hazard Levels gameplay loop before your first crawl, you'll waste less money and lose fewer runs. The game's own motto sums it up: Rift > Loot > Survive > Brew > Repeat.

You're a recruit for The Family, a research division hidden beneath The Fox Hole Arms, a British pub. You travel into unstable interdimensional rifts, collect bizarre ingredients, meet a cash quota, and get back before the rift collapses. Between runs, you spend your earnings at the pub on bar snacks, upgrades, and drinks.

Key facts for new players:

• Players: 1–4. Proximity voice chat is enabled, and solo play works offline.
• Camera: first or third person. On PC, switch under the preferred view type in the graphics settings.
• Platforms: Steam, Epic, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with crossplay on all of them. Version 1.0 launched on November 12, 2026, after Early Access began on April 30, 2026.
• Where to buy: pick it up on Steam or the Xbox Store.

A Crawl, Step by Step

Each run is called a Crawl. Here's how one plays out:

Image: Steam / Wales Interactive

1. Gear up on the double-decker bus. The bus parked at the pub carries the Gravity Gauntlet, the Rift Scanner, Rift Stabilizers, perk drinks, and both guns. Pull the switch to depart.
2. Fill the first quota. Find the collection station and fill it with ingredients until you hit the cash target shown on screen. Once the quota is complete, you'll hear "Rift detected."
3. Scan for the rift. Use the scanner to find the anomaly. Rifts can hide in side rooms, laundry rooms, or even under your feet.
4. Stabilize and enter. Place a Rift Stabilizer in front of the rift to open the portal, then step through.
5. Repeat deeper. Each rift dimension has its own collection station and a new quota. The deeper you go, the stranger the layouts and threats become.
6. Escape the collapse. Eventually the rift starts collapsing and a countdown begins. Get everyone back to the bus before it hits zero, or the crawl fails.

Tips that follow from how crawls work:

• Bring more than one stabilizer. You need a fresh one for every rift. Supply stations inside sell them for around 3,000, while the bus has them ready to take, so pack extras before you leave.
• Don't try to leave early. The bus won't let you exit until you've revealed more rifts, so plan to push at least one layer deep.
• Keep the route back in your head. The scanner can show you a path to the exit, which helps when the collapse timer starts.
• Review the Post Summary Screen. Added in 1.0, it shows your earnings and completed Challenges after every crawl.

Hauling Loot With the Gravity Gauntlet

The Gravity Gauntlet is your main tool. It lets you grab, carry, and throw objects. By default it holds two items at once, and you can charge a throw for extra force. The outline color changes as the throw charges.

Image: Steam / Wales Interactive

Loot is fragile. Every bump against a wall, door frame, or teammate knocks value off the item, and the loss shows up as damage numbers. A 6,200 cosmic apple can drop to 5,600 after one collision with a toilet. To protect your haul:

• Wait for the slow sliding doors to fully open before you carry anything through.
• Carry valuables yourself instead of throwing them across rooms.
• Spread out when your team is hauling, so you don't crash loot into each other.
• Prioritize high-value pickups such as yellow crystals, rift plants, and golden idols over low-value scraps. Ingredient spawns favor fewer, higher-value items.

Back at the pub, you can spend money at the upgrade station to improve your Gravity Gauntlet so it carries more items. The upgrade only applies to the gauntlet in your hand, so if you drop it, the upgrade is gone. You can also kick, which is mapped to V on PC. Kicking breaks open glowing crates and staggers weak creatures when you're out of ammo.

Creatures, Traps, and Rift Surges

Hazard Levels started as gunless stealth horror. In 1.0, the bus carries two weapon types, and the Gravity Gauntlet works as a real weapon: throw anything and everything at whatever is chasing you.

Image: Steam / Wales Interactive

Weapon	Ammo	Notes
Revolver	12 rounds	Repurchase once the rounds run out
AKM	60 starting ammo	Assault rifle stocked on the bus

Smashing crates and killing enemies can randomly drop Power Ups, such as a team-wide heal or temporary infinite ammo. Resupply closets and in-rift caches sell ammo and devices.

The creature roster is where crawls get chaotic:

Creature	What it does
Hollow Man	Looks like an abandoned corpse until it gets up
Tilly	A "lost child" in a trench coat who carries a knife
Wizard	Turns you into a gnome; his name glows above him
Kevin	Steals equipment, drinks, snacks, and 20% to 50% of your money with his tongue
The Phantom	Inverts your controls on contact
Flying Apex	A mutated shark that bites and spits whirlpools
Spider	Webs you in place

Traps are part of the procedurally generated rooms. Watch for rotating fire traps, crushing pillars, laser barriers, giant swinging hammers that launch you into the air, and the electrified traps of the Aquarium facility.

Version 1.0 adds Rift Surges, which can hit any rift at any time. Your head might triple in size, floors can turn to ice, or the whole world can flip upside down.

To study creatures without dying, track down the Rift Bestiary hidden somewhere in The Fox Hole Arms. It logs every monster you've encountered.

Perk Cocktails and the Secret Brewery

Drinks are your consumables. On your first crawl they're free from the drinks cabinet. After that, they cost money.

Drink	Effect
Coffin Dodger	Revives you three seconds after you go down
Baldwin's Health Elixir	Heals you
Dynamo	Big speed boost
Shapeshifter	Turns you into a prop, such as a barrel, pickle, or football
Teenie Weenie	Shrinks you, and teammates can pick you up and throw you
Magnetonic	Pulls items to you from up to 5m away for 20 seconds, with no item limit
R.A.D.S	Gives you a toxic aura that damages nearby enemies

Drink Coffin Dodger before trouble hits. Leaving it in your inventory won't save you when you go down. Since 1.0, any perk cocktail can also be thrown at teammates to give them its effect, whether that's a heal or a toilet transformation.

Brewdragon's Secret Brewery turns your haul into new drinks. Activate the hidden door by the cash register in the pub to reach the Brewing Station:

• Follow recipes using the ingredients you brought back. Free-handing a mix produces a failed drink.
• Complete orders in the order ledgers to learn power-drink recipes and level up their potency.
• The finished system has more than 70 cocktails to discover, from the Mint Jupiter to the Wormhole Sour.

Progression at The Fox Hole Arms

Money you bank belongs to you, not the team, so coordinate spending. Base player health is 200.

Bar snacks boost your stats for the session. Each has five upgrade levels, and you lose the bonus if you die mid-crawl:

• Iron-Hide Pork Rinds: more HP
• Hoarder's Pickled Rings: an extra inventory slot
• Sharp-Tongue Zappers: more stamina
• Bull-Rush Beef Strips: more speed
• Steady-On Nuts: faster stamina regen

You can also tackle the Challenge Room, which has unlockable cosmetics inspired by the team's favorite movies and a beer mat table to track progress. Customize your mask, suit, gloves, and scanner skin at the customization center behind the fireplace.

Achievements to chase (there are 45 on Steam). The highlighted set includes:

• Rift Amateur, Rift Pro, and Rift Champion
• Gnome Dunk
• Hoarder, Fashion Icon, Special Delivery, Can't Touch This, Best in Class, and Stinkin' Cute

FAQ

Can you play Hazard Levels solo?

Yes. The game is balanced for 1–4 players, and solo play works offline.

Is it like Lethal Company or R.E.P.O.?

It shares the co-op scavenging and physics-based hauling of those games. What sets it apart is rift-hopping through procedural dimensions and the cocktail-brewing system.

Does it have crossplay?

Yes. The 1.0 release supports crossplay across Steam, Epic, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. On Xbox, online play requires Game Pass Essential, Premium, or Ultimate.

What are the minimum PC specs?

You need a 64-bit version of Windows 7, 8.1, or 10, an Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD FX-6300, 8 GB RAM, a GTX 760 or Radeon R7 260x with 2GB of VRAM, DirectX 11, and 15 GB of storage. If the game runs at 30 FPS on a strong PC, set Fullscreen to Fullscreen in the graphics options.