Here's the thing about auto-battlers: once combat starts, you're a spectator. You made your choices. Now you watch.
Deep Sky: Tracers doesn't work like that.
Mid-fight, combat freezes. The game presents you with a set of hacking tools — Traces — and asks a simple question: who do you hack? You drag a Trace onto an enemy unit. Maybe you flip their stats. Maybe you make their next attack hit their own ally. Maybe you disable their chip entirely. Then you choose one of your own units to protect with a Firewall — because your opponent is doing the exact same thing to you, right now.
Both sides resolve at once. You find out whether your hack landed — or whether it slammed into a Firewall. This is TRACE, and it's the reason the game is called Tracers.
[PICTURE OF THE TRACE SELECTION SCREEN WITH HACK CARDS VISIBLE]
What is TRACE?
TRACE is a mid-combat intervention system. When it activates, both players get two choices:
1. Choose a Hack. Pick one of your available Trace hacks and drag it onto an enemy unit. Each hack does something different — corrupts stats, redirects attacks, applies persistent debuffs. You're choosing which enemy unit to sabotage and how.
2. Choose a Firewall. Pick one of your own units to protect. If your opponent's hack targets that unit, the hack is blocked completely. The hacker takes backtrace damage: −1 Hero HP.
Both sides act simultaneously. Neither player knows what the other chose until the resolve phase plays out.
You can skip either choice — or both. Sometimes the right move is to firewall without hacking, or to hack without wasting a firewall. But skipping means giving up a chance to swing the fight.
[PICTURE OF DRAGGING A TRACE HACK ONTO AN ENEMY UNIT]
When does TRACE happen?
TRACE doesn't trigger at the start of combat. It arrives mid-fight, after units have already been trading blows — when the board state has shifted and you have real information to work with.
Specifically, TRACE activates after the 3rd or 4th combat cycle — a cycle being one full pass where every alive unit has attacked. By that point, you can see which units are low, which are carrying, and where the fight is heading.
But there's a catch: TRACE access depends on match round.
- Rounds 1–2: No TRACE. Fights are too early.
- Rounds 3–4: One TRACE moment per combat.
- Round 5+: Up to two TRACE moments per combat.
This means TRACE becomes more important as the match goes on. Early rounds are pure board strength. Late rounds? Late rounds are where hacking decides outcomes.
[PICTURE OF THE "YOUR MOVE, TRACER" BANNER APPEARING MID-COMBAT]
The 10 Hacks — your arsenal
You have ten Trace hacks available. Each can only be used once per match, so choosing when to deploy which hack is part of the strategy. They fall into four categories.
Data Corruption
These hacks mess with raw numbers — HP, Power, and stats.
Bit Flip — Swaps the target's HP and Power. A tanky unit with high HP and low attack suddenly becomes a glass cannon, and vice versa. Works well against units with lopsided stats — the more extreme the imbalance, the more devastating the flip.
Stack Overflow — Doubles the target's Power, but the unit dies immediately after its next attack. It turns an enemy unit into a ticking bomb: one massive hit, then gone. Strong against units that haven't attacked yet in the cycle.
Deep Copy — Copies the target's Power onto your weakest glitch. You're stealing the enemy's strength to boost your own board. Often useful when your weakest unit just needs more damage to matter.
Hijack
These hacks redirect or invert enemy attacks entirely.
Rewrite Allegiance — The target's next attack hits its own nearest ally instead of your board. Friendly fire. Especially strong against high-Power enemies positioned next to fragile allies.
Reverse Polarity — The target's next attack heals instead of dealing damage. The enemy's strongest hitter becomes your medic for one turn. Best used on a unit about to swing hard.
Sabotage
Persistent effects that weaken units over time or strip their tools.
Memory Leak — The target takes 1 damage after each of its own attacks. Doesn't sound like much, but on a unit that attacks every cycle, it adds up fast.
Feedback Loop — Whenever the target takes damage, its nearest ally also takes 1 damage. Turns focused fire into splash damage. Strong when the opponent has clustered their units.
Null Pointer — Disables the target's chip for the rest of combat. If a unit's chip is core to its role — a Firewall chip on a tank, a Payload on a carry — removing it mid-fight is devastating.
[PICTURE OF THE TRACE HACK CARDS WITH THEIR ICONS AND NAMES]
Chaos
Board-level disruption that changes targeting and creates unpredictable situations.
Taunt Worm — Moves taunt to the enemy unit with the lowest HP. Suddenly their most fragile unit is absorbing all your attacks. Works best when the opponent has a low-HP unit they were protecting behind a tank.
Overflow Error — All damage the target deals also hits itself. The harder they swing, the faster they die. Particularly effective on high-Power units.
Firewall — protect what matters
After choosing your hack, you pick one of your own units to Firewall. This is your defense against the opponent's hack.
If your opponent's hack targets the unit you firewalled, the hack is completely blocked. It doesn't activate, no effect applies. And the hacker pays a price: −1 Hero HP as backtrace damage.
That −1 HP matters. In a game where Hero HP determines who's still alive in the match, losing health because your hack was predicted feels bad. It means Firewall isn't just defense — it's a counter-attack on your opponent's life total.
The challenge is that you're guessing. You're trying to predict which unit your opponent will target. Your strongest carry? Your chipped tank? The unit that's holding your synergy together? Every player reasons differently, and that's where the mind game lives.
[PICTURE OF THE FIREWALL SELECTION SCREEN WITH "INSTALL FIREWALL" PROMPT]
The mind game
TRACE isn't random. It's a reading exercise.
When the TRACE window opens, you can see the full board — both sides. You see which enemy units are carrying the fight. You see which of your units are in danger. And you know your opponent sees the same things you do.
That's what makes it interesting. The "correct" hack target is often obvious: the enemy's highest-Power unit, or the one with a critical chip. But if it's obvious to you, it's obvious to your opponent — and they'll firewall it.
So the real decision becomes: do I go for the obvious high-value target and risk hitting a firewall? Or do I hack a secondary target that's less likely to be protected, knowing the effect will actually land?
And then there's the firewall side: do you protect your most valuable unit, or do you protect the second-most-valuable one, betting that your opponent will go for the obvious choice and miss?
This is the layer that makes TRACE more than a mechanic. It's a conversation between two players, played out through hack and firewall choices, where reading your opponent matters as much as reading the board.
Why TRACE matters
In most auto-battlers, if two identical boards face each other, the outcome is the same every time. There's no room for a human decision to change the result once the round starts.
TRACE changes that. Two identical boards can produce completely different outcomes depending on what each player hacks, where each player places their firewall, and whether those choices intersect. A well-timed Bit Flip on an enemy carry can flip a losing fight. A predicted Null Pointer that slams into a firewall can cost the hacker a point of Hero HP they couldn't afford to lose.
It's also why the game is called Deep Sky: Tracers. You're not just building boards and watching them fight. You're a Tracer — someone who leaves traces in the network, who rewrites the rules mid-combat, who hacks the system from the inside. TRACE is the mechanic that makes that fantasy real.
Every match, somewhere around round 3 or 4, combat pauses. A message appears: Your move, Tracer. And for a few seconds, the outcome of the fight is in your hands.
[PICTURE OF THE RESOLVE ANIMATION WITH PCB LINES CONNECTING HACK TO TARGET]
Ready to leave your trace? Play the free demo and try hacking the board yourself. Want to understand combat flow first? Read the combat guide.