With survivor games, you can forget about the story and focus purely on fast-paced action. The first thing you’ll do is pick your space fighter from a surprisingly solid selection. Naturally, only two are available at the start, while the rest stay locked until you put in plenty of runs or reach certain milestones. Progress is measured pretty simply through how long you survive and how many bosses you manage to defeat.
Each fighter has its own visual style, but more importantly, every ship comes with a unique special skill and a couple of perks that set it apart from the others. You can also equip your craft with two guns. Just like the fighters, only two weapons are available initially, while the rest unlock over time through continued play. Once you’re satisfied with your loadout, you’ll jump straight into a stage that’s always the same except for some visual differences.
Thankfully, despite the space setting, the game doesn’t force you to wrestle with heavy physics-based movement where momentum keeps pushing you forward while turning. To keep frustration to a minimum and let you focus on the action, you can switch to more standard controls. Your ship still has a bit of weight to it, but movement feels far more responsive and comfortable.
Your ship doesn’t take direct hull damage immediately because enemies first have to break through your shield, which automatically starts recharging a few seconds after you stop taking hits. If your hull does get damaged, enemies occasionally drop health pickups that repair a few points. Beyond that, everything should feel comfortably familiar to fans of the genre.
Your goal is to fly around a relatively small arena while auto-aim and auto-fire handle incoming enemies. Every destroyed enemy drops experience orbs that fill your experience bar. Leveling up grants an extra health point and opens a perk selection screen.
Here, you choose one reward from four random options. Most of the upgrades are exactly what you’d expect, including increased damage, higher critical chance, extra health, more experience gained, slower enemy projectiles, and similar bonuses. If luck is on your side, you might also get higher rarity rewards marked with the usual tiers ranging from common to legendary.
The higher-tier perks are where things become far more exciting, especially since you don’t unlock additional weapons during a run beyond the two you selected at the beginning. Some perks can dramatically improve your offense, like causing enemies to explode after death or granting support drones that attack, collect experience, or repair your hull and shields. The drones, in particular, feel like complete game changers. Since duplicate upgrades can appear again during future level-ups, you can eventually build a small fleet of drones following you around, turning your ship into a chaotic flying fortress.
The main objective is to survive for ten minutes and defeat the boss waiting at the end. After that, you can continue in endless mode, where enemy numbers keep increasing and additional bosses appear every five minutes. Eventually, the screen becomes packed with enemies and projectiles, and surviving starts to feel impossible.
Unfortunately, aside from unlocking new weapons, ships, and perks for future runs, there’s no meta-progression system with permanent upgrades. On one side, that means there’s slightly less motivation for “just one more run.” On the other hand, it also means success depends far more on your skill and perk choices rather than endless grinding.
