The first decision you make is choosing a ship. Each one comes with its own perk, such as piercing attacks or increased speed, along with a starting weapon. You will likely find one that suits you best and stick with it for most future runs, since many of the ships are fairly similar aside from small percentage differences that affect how often certain effects occur.
Next, you select a stage. Only two are available at the beginning, while the others must be unlocked by completing the ones that are already open. Instead of surviving for a set number of minutes or clearing waves, the main objective is to collect a required number of gears. These sometimes drop from defeated enemies or can be obtained by reaching event circles, where you must stay inside for a few seconds until the meter fills.
From there, the gameplay follows the familiar structure of a survivors style game. You move around the area, either aiming manually or enabling auto aim, while auto fire handles enemies that come within range. However, auto-aim is a bit all over the place, and weapons will tend to aim at something that’s not even visible on the screen or prefer distant enemies instead of those right next to you.
Destroyed enemies drop experience, or scrap, which fills a progress bar. Once the bar is full, you choose a perk from four random options. These perks can be stat upgrades such as increased health, higher damage, additional projectiles, or faster rotation speed. Rotation speed matters because weapons orbit around your ship and cannot fire from every direction instantly. Another option is obtaining a new weapon, which is placed on your ship and attacks enemies alongside your main gun. Each weapon targets different enemies, and you can equip up to nine weapons, while stat upgrades are limited to five slots.
Both stats and weapons can appear again during future selections. Choosing them again improves their effectiveness. Stat upgrades simply increase the relevant numbers or percentages, while weapon upgrades clearly state what changes, such as higher bullet damage, additional projectiles, piercing capability, larger projectile size, and similar improvements.
Enemies grow more numerous and more dangerous the longer you survive, and new types appear over time. Stronger enemies also have a chance to drop better experience orbs and more valuable gears. Event circles provide random rewards in addition to gears. These can include spawning a drone, triggering an explosion that clears nearby enemies, temporarily increasing your firepower, or granting items such as a magnet or health.
Gears serve as the game's currency and are spent between runs to permanently improve various stats such as damage, scrap value, and health, or to upgrade individual weapons. Although the cost increases with each purchase, upgrades are capped at four levels. This limit prevents any single stat or weapon from becoming excessively powerful. Some ships, stats, and weapons start out locked and require completing certain gameplay milestones to unlock them, which happens naturally as you continue playing.
