A retro-arcade, horizontal-scrolling shoot-'em-up. You pilot a lone fighter fixed on the left side of the screen while waves of enemies, hazards, and bosses scroll in from the right. Survive as many waves as you can, level up your weapons, and climb the shared leaderboard. Presented in a full retro arcade-cabinet frame (scanlines, CRT vignette, marquee chase-lights, bezel bolts) for that coin-op feel.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrows / WASD | Maneuver |
| Space | Fire cannon |
| E | Cycle active weapon |
| Q | Cycle wingman formation |
| B | Bomb |
| P / Esc | Pause |
| Enter | Confirm on start / game-over / pause menus |
The Loop
Enemies spawn in numbered waves, each with a fixed roster of enemy types that scales up in size and toughness as you progress. The roster is deterministic (the same wave always spawns the same mix), so results stay comparable between runs and players. Clear every enemy in a wave without letting any escape off-screen for a Perfect Clear bonus. Every 5th wave is a boss fight. You have 3 lives and a hull bar that fully refills between lives; the run ends when your last hull point runs out.
Weapons
You always have your standard cannon, plus up to four pickup weapons that stack alongside it. Cycle between them with E. Each levels up independently from 1 to 3 as you collect more of that type. Picking up a weapon that's already maxed converts into a flat +200 score bonus instead.
- Spread: a widening fan of shots (3 shots at Lv1, up to 7 in a wider arc at Lv3). Best for crowd control.
- Rapid: narrow, fast-firing parallel streams (up to 3 streams at a very short cooldown at Lv3). The single-target DPS pick.
- Pierce: bullets punch through multiple enemies (2 hits at Lv1, up to 5 at Lv3).
- Chain: bullet impacts arc to nearby enemies (up to 3 chain jumps at a 190px radius at Lv3).
Enemies
| Enemy | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Drone | Basic straight-line flier |
| Interceptor | Weaves in a sine-wave pattern |
| Cruiser | Slow and tanky, fires aimed shots at you |
| Sentry | Carries a rotating partial shield with a gap you have to time your shots through |
| Turret | Slow, heavily armored, fires 3-shot aimed bursts |
| Swarmer | Spawns in clustered squads of 4 |
New enemy types unlock as you climb through the waves, and their HP/speed step up in tiers the further you get.
Hazard: Gemini
Starting around wave 16, watch for GEMINI: two indestructible drones linked by a crackling energy tether, rotating like a rigid rod as it drifts across the screen. Vertical orientation blocks the whole lane; catch it near-horizontal to dash through the gap. Direction changes are always flashed as a warning first. It steps aside during boss fights so it never stacks with a boss encounter.
Bosses
A boss shows up every 5 waves, rotating through three archetypes that get tougher (and get a tier callsign: Alpha, Beta, Gamma...) each time they reappear. Defeating a boss is worth a big score bonus that scales with how many times you've faced that archetype.
- Sentinel: a hovering gunship with escort drones. Alternates aimed-fire phases with a telegraphed lock-on charge that unleashes a sustained angled beam; while it fires the beam it's briefly invulnerable, so you can't just burst it down.
- Sovereign: a rotating ring of destructible shell segments guarding a central core. Blast through the shell during its spin phases; once it's gone, the core stays exposed. Bombs punch straight through the shell to the core.
- Viper: a segmented serpent that winds across the screen, taking damage tail-first. Watch for its rapid-fire "Barrage" phase, and once only the head segment is left, it's exposed and speeds up.
Power-ups
A single power-up drifts in from the right on a randomized timer. Grab it to roll one of 8 types at random: the four weapons above, plus:
- Shield: absorbs hits before they touch your hull; levels up to a higher max capacity.
- Hull Repair: restores hull health.
- Wingman: adds an escort pod (up to 4). Cycle their formation with Q: stacked Forward, flanking Outward, or a rotating Orbit around your ship.
- Bomb (rarer drop): stock up to 5. Each bomb instantly clears every enemy and enemy bullet on screen, gives you a brief moment of invulnerability, and slams a boss's core for heavy damage.
Grabbing a pickup that's already maxed out (weapon at Lv3, shield/hull/wingmen/bombs full) converts it into a flat score bonus instead of going to waste.
Scoring
- Every kill scores based on the enemy type, scaled up slightly as waves get harder.
- Clearing a wave grants a bonus that grows with wave number.
- A Perfect Clear (no enemies escaped that wave) adds an extra, larger bonus.
- Defeating a boss grants a large bonus that scales with the boss's tier.
- Maxed-out pickups convert to a flat bonus rather than being wasted.
- All scoring is scaled by your chosen difficulty.
Difficulty
| Easy | Normal | Hard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire rate | Faster | Standard | Slower |
| Weapon spread | Wider | Standard | Narrower |
| Enemy toughness | Reduced | Standard | Increased |
| Score multiplier | ×0.75 | ×1.0 | ×1.5 |
Leaderboard
A shared, cross-player leaderboard tracks your best run (name, score, and wave reached) per difficulty, so Easy/Normal/Hard runs are ranked separately. Only your personal best per difficulty is kept on the board, keeping it a ranking of players rather than a flood of repeat entries.
Atmosphere
The sky cycles through five time-of-day phases (night, dawn, morning, dusk, and zenith), each with its own palette, crossfading as you play, with a parallax city skyline scrolling behind the action and occasional shooting stars (and rarer full meteor showers) lighting up the background between boss fights.