Equipment & Boosters
This is the whole of Highwater's progression. There is no XP, no levels, no skill trees, no respec and no gradually expanding attack list (Games Asylum). What a character can do at the end of the game is what they could do when they joined, plus at most four equipped items.
The two slots
| Slot type | Count | Contents | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weapons | 2 per character | Fishing Rod, Pristine AK47, Mini Crossbow, Nail Gun, Shiv, Crutch, spanner, harpoon, oar (start) | Determines the character's attack options and range band |
| Boosters | 2 per character | ~15 named consumables/supplements | Permanent stat lift (melee damage, max HP) or in-battle effect (heal, extra movement) |
Boosters explicitly replace med kits — healing is an equipped item, not a battlefield action from a shared pool (Games Asylum). Some are permanent, some are one-shot in-battle boosts (Entertainium). Reviewers on both mobile and console report finishing with unused stock, which suggests the supply is tuned generously enough that the choice rarely bites.
Named boosters seen in a completionist route: Wedding Cake, Betonburg Beans, Powder Bar, Green Bean Painkillers, Theo's Ouzo, Supermale, Faak, Das Speed Stimulant Tabletten, Off-brand Steroid Gummies, Algae Schnapps, Vitaboost, Salinas Max, Ibuproper, MeteorFe+, Alpha Cans. The naming is a satire channel in its own right — corporate-wellness parody delivered through item flavour text (Narrative & Theme).
Numbers unverified
No booster's magnitude (+HP, +damage, +movement) has been read from game data, and the in-game UI reportedly does not surface them clearly. The one community data point is that at least one health booster was bugged and applied no health at all on the Netflix build. Treat all magnitudes as unknown.
Two unexplained rules
- Not every character can equip every weapon, and the game never explains why (TheGamer). There are no visible classes, proficiencies or stat requirements — the restriction is authorial, presumably to protect each character's signature verb, but it reads to the player as an arbitrary refusal.
- Boosters have no such restriction (Gameffine) — so the game teaches one rule for one slot type and the opposite for the other, with no signposting for either.
The leak
Equipment vanishes with a departing character (Party & Characters). Since departures are scripted, unannounced, and sometimes very early — George leaves shortly after joining in chapter 2 — the dominant strategy is hoarding: give nothing to anyone you are not sure about. The community guide's very first tip is exactly that.
This produces a rare inversion: the game's only progression system is safest when unused. Meanwhile the fights are winnable without any of it, because difficulty is authored per board rather than tuned against player power (Combat). The result is a progression layer that is simultaneously punitive and inconsequential.
Reverse-engineering the intent
The design reads as a mobile-first decision. On Netflix mobile, an equip screen with two slots per character is about as much inventory as a touch UI can carry, and no-XP means no session-length grind and no monetisable progression hook — a good fit for a subscription title with no IAP. Simić has said a future turn-based game would include "more RPG elements with an evolution of characters over time," which implies the absence here was recognised rather than accidental.
What breaks if you remove it
Very little, mechanically — and that is the finding. Delete boosters entirely and the game loses a satire channel and a small pre-battle ritual; delete weapons and characters lose their range bands. Neither deletion would change how a single encounter is solved, because encounters are solved with positioning and props (Environmental Interaction).
Related
Party & Characters · Combat · UI & Information Design · Tensions & Lessons