Fleet Strike Command · Varan system
The Swarm has jumped the Varan system. Launch from the carrier Halcyon and break their attack formations before they reach the fleet.
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Enter · controller Start or A
Flight manual
| Keyboard & mouse | Controller | Touch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steer | WSAD or mouse | Left stick | Left half of screen |
| Roll | Q E | Right stick ↔ | ⟲ ⟳ |
| Throttle | [ ] or wheel | Right stick ↕ | THR slider |
| Afterburner | Shift | LB | BURN |
| Throttle cut | Backspace idle · \ full | — | — |
| Keyboard & mouse | Controller | Touch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lasers | Space or left click | RT or A | FIRE |
| Auto-fire | double-tap fire | double-tap RT or A | slide FIRE up |
| Missile | F or right click | LT or B | MSL |
| Target | T nearest · Tab next · R attacker | X · Y · RB | TGT · ATK |
Hold a target in your sights to lock a missile. R picks whoever is shooting at you right now, which is usually the one worth turning on.
Auto-fire latches the trigger: two quick presses of any fire control lock it on, and a single press releases it. On a touch screen, slide the FIRE button upwards instead and take your finger off. AUTO appears beside the laser bar while it is held.
| Keyboard & mouse | Controller | Touch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camera | C chase or cockpit | Right stick click | VIEW |
| Invert pitch | I | Back | — |
| Sound | M all · V voice callouts | — | — |
| Pause | P or Esc | Start | PAUSE |
| Save & quit | A button on the pause menu. The run resumes at the start of the wave you left. | ||
| Start · continue | Enter · N for a new sortie | A · X | Buttons |
The stick is flight style by default: pushing forward dives, as in a flight sim. Press I to swap it for arcade style, where forward climbs.
Esc or Back
Mission briefing
The Swarm has jumped into the Varan system. Launch from the carrier Halcyon, break their attack formations before they reach the fleet, and keep clear of the Wardens: their tractor beams take fighters whole.
| DroneFast interceptor · 6 hits | 100 |
| LancerHeavy fighter · 12 hits | 160 |
| WardenElite · tractor beam · 58 hits | 750 |
| Raider saucerFires in any direction | 1000 |
| Hive shipCapital ship · 4 emitter pods, then the core | 6000 |
| Swarm aceElite pilot · out-turns you · 3 phases | 8000 |
| Asteroid L / M / SSplits when hit | 20·50·100 |
| Space mineDark until something comes close · then it follows | — |
| Supply crateShield · hull · ordnance | 50 |
The first waves are a gentle warm-up; the Swarm sharpens up every wave. Shoot down a Warden carrying a captured fighter and that pilot joins you as a wingman for the rest of the wave, then flies home to the Halcyon as a spare fighter.
Every fifth wave is a boss, and there are three of them in rotation. A hive ship: your guns do nothing to its hull, so strip the four emitter pods, one on each face, and the core opens up — missiles hit a pod four times as hard as anything else. A hold-out: no capital ship, just an unending swarm, and the stage ends when Halcyon's relief flight of three arrives rather than when something dies. A Swarm ace: one elite pilot that out-turns you, breaks off three times to call escorts, and patches itself up while they live. Asteroids drift through every wave as cover, as a hazard, and as a bonus.
Each wave lists its objectives. They are bonuses, not conditions — you cannot fail one, and the only way to lose is to run out of fighters. Each one met raises that wave's score multiplier; clear them all and two extra missiles are loaded for the next wave.
The field carries space mines. A mine sits dark and stays off the radar until something comes within about 45 units — then it lights up, starts broadcasting, and follows whatever woke it for a couple of seconds before going off. It does not care whose ship it touches, so a Lancer led across one is a Lancer dealt with. Shoot one from outside the blast and it is simply gone, and a blast sets off its neighbours.
Supply crates restore shields or hull, or load two more missiles. They drift in the field, drop from Swarm wrecks — a Warden is worth about one in three — and are occasionally buried in an asteroid. What is inside leans towards whatever you are short of. Fly through one to take it.
Do not ram anything. A collision costs you far more than it costs them, and the heavy ships simply shrug it off and keep shooting.
The run is saved between waves, so you can close the tab mid-sortie and pick the wave back up later, and the pause menu has a Save & quit button for leaving on purpose. Either way you resume at the start of the wave you left. Losing your last fighter ends the run and clears the save. The save lives in this browser only.
There are two leader boards of twenty, three characters each: a global one on the game's own server, and a local one kept in this browser for when the server cannot be reached. A finished run is written to the local board first and sent to the global one afterwards, so a score is never lost to a timeout.
Posting a score sends the run's numbers — score, wave, kills, shots, hits, asteroids, how long it took — plus your three characters and your device's time zone and local clock.
The server additionally records, from the request itself: your IP address, the country, region and city that address resolves to, your browser user-agent string, and the operating system, browser and device type read out of it. These are kept to spot forged scores and to see what the game is being played on. Only the name, score, wave, date and country are ever shown to anyone; the rest is never served back.
The lookup from IP to place is done by ip-api.com, which means your IP address is sent to that service and cached here for a month. Nothing is recorded unless you confirm a name on the debrief screen — play without entering one and nothing about you is stored. Playing offline, or with the server unreachable, uses the local board and sends nothing at all.
three.js, and nothing else at runtime. No build step and no server: one page plus generated assets is the whole game. Every sound, voice line and texture is synthesised rather than recorded — the source explains how.
Ship models: Quaternius Ultimate Spaceships · surface textures: ambientCG · both CC0
Esc or Back
Flight paused
Press P, Esc or controller Start to resume. Click the view afterwards to steer with the mouse again.
The run is saved at the start of every wave, so leaving now costs you this wave and nothing else.
Debrief · Fleet Strike Command
Flight Officer
Up / down for a letter · left / right for a slot · Enter, Fire or A to confirm
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