Vector Drift
A wireframe rock-field shooter in a cube of space that wraps on every side — a drifting ship with thrust and a risky hyperspace jump, rocks that split, two kinds of saucer — and between waves the debris you missed falls on the cities below, to be stopped with interceptors.
Added
How to use it
Glowing vector lines in three dimensions. Your ship sits in a cube of space with no edges: fly out of one face and you come back in through the opposite one. Rocks drift through it; shoot one and it splits into smaller, faster pieces. Clear the field and the game changes: debris from the rocks falls towards six cities on the planet below, and you have three batteries of interceptors to stop it.
Everything is mine — the ship, the two saucers, the cities, the scoring and the music, which is a short loop synthesised in the browser as you play.
How to play
The rock field. The ship keeps moving until you thrust the other way, so plan your turns. Big rocks score 20, medium 50, small 100. Two saucers turn up: the six-sided Warden (200) sprays shots roughly your way; the spindle-shaped Needle (1,000) leads its shots and gets better at it every wave. Hyperspace drops you somewhere random — perhaps inside a rock. Each jump in a wave is more likely to fail (8 % for the first, rising to 45 %); the HUD shows the risk of the next one. An extra ship every 10,000 points.
The ground phase. Debris falls in lines towards the cities and the batteries. Click or tap where you want an interceptor to burst: it flies from the nearest battery with ammunition and explodes at that point, and anything inside the blast is destroyed — and bursts in turn, so a well-placed shot can start a chain (25 points a piece, more for each link in the chain). Some debris splits on the way down. At the end, 100 points for each city still standing and 5 for each interceptor left. A lost city is rebuilt for every 15,000 points. Lose all six, or all your ships, and the game is over.
The cameras. Chase sits behind the ship, with a radar of what is around you (a line from each blip shows whether it is above or below). Top shows the whole cube from above, with a line from everything down to the floor so you can judge height. In the top view your shots get a little more aim assistance.
Keyboard |
← → or A D turn; ↑ ↓ or W S nose up and down; Shift, X or K thrust; Space, Z or J fire; H hyperspace; V camera; P or Esc pause; M sound. Ground phase: click a point, or move the cross with the arrow keys and press Space. |
Touch |
Left stick turns and pitches; THR thrusts, FIRE fires, JUMP jumps. Ground phase: tap where to burst. |
Gamepad |
Left stick turn and pitch; A fire; RT or RB thrust; Y or LB hyperspace; Back camera; Start pause. Ground phase: stick moves the cross, A fires. |
Pitch: inverted swaps the up and down keys, if you prefer flight-stick style. Low graphics halves the particles and the resolution for slower devices; the game also lowers its resolution by itself if frames take too long. Shake turns off screen shake (it starts off if your system asks for reduced motion). The game pauses when you switch tab or window. Full screen gives it the whole screen, which is the best way to play on a phone, in portrait or landscape.
It needs WebGL, which every current desktop and phone browser has.
For something slower and more careful, try Lander 3D.
Feedback is a gift. Something to improve, a feature to add, or a bug? Tell me.
Runs entirely in your browser — network requests go only to the services named on this page.