Orbit Panic: graze the bullets without getting hit

Orbit Panic is a vertical-scrolling arcade game built with HTML5 Canvas and plain JavaScript. You fly a ship up an orbit full of enemies, and the score does not come only from destroying them: passing a hair's breadth from a bullet without being touched raises a multiplier that is lost when you take damage. It is designed to be played in portrait, on a phone or a PC, with nothing to install, for free.

How to play

• Move the ship by dragging with a finger or the mouse, or with WASD and the arrow keys. Dragging does not place the ship: it pushes it towards where you are going, with the same physics as the keyboard.
• On touch screens the ship fires by itself. On a PC you hold Space, with exactly the same rate of fire: what changes is who decides, not how much damage is dealt.
• Enemies arrive in recognisable waves — rows, Vs, columns, crossings, walls with a gap — and destroying the whole wave gives a bonus multiplied by your graze.
• Every 3 levels a mini boss appears and every 9 a multi-phase boss with patterns you can learn. The scenery never resets between levels: the pace rises with no loading screens.

Controls

Both modes fire just as fast: only who decides changes.

Grazing

There is an invisible ring around the ship. Every bullet or enemy that enters it without touching you scores 10 points and raises a multiplier that goes up to x4. The multiplier decays on its own if you stop grazing and drops straight back to one when you take damage. It is what turns movement into a risk decision: the closer, the more points.

Waves

Enemies never appear loose at random: every formation is a named wave, and two hard waves are never chained back to back, so there is always a breather. Clearing a whole wave is worth 200 points multiplied by your graze.

Enemies

• SCOUT — Drops straight down and fires now and then.
• INTERCEPTOR — Enters from one side and crosses very fast.
• KAMIKAZE — Aims at you and dives. Locks its course as it closes in.
• TURRET — Fixed, on a structure that stops your bullets.
• MINELAYER — Descends sowing mines. It does not fire: it takes your space.
• ESCORT — Orbits another and stops your bullets. Kill it first.
• SNIPER — Aims where you will be. Change course while it charges.

Scoring

Power-ups

All power-ups are passive: you pick them up and they work on their own, with nothing to trigger. That way the game is exactly the same on a phone and on a PC. They are lost when they leave the screen, not by time, and you can hold up to 5 lives.

• POWER — One more shot: single, double, then a three-way spread.
• RAPID FIRE — Shoot faster. Two steps.
• SHIELD — Absorbs one hit. Stacks.
• REPAIR — Restores one life.
• MAGNET — Pulls nearby power ups in for a few seconds.
• SLOW MOTION — Enemies and bullets move slower. You don’t.
• SIDE SHOT — Two diagonal shots. Only dropped by tough enemies.
• TWIN SHIP — Shoots with you. Up to two. Only dropped by bosses.

Bosses

There are two, and they take turns: the core, round, which shoots, and the carrier, wide, which launches ships, a pair of scissoring bullet streams and rows of mines. Each has its own mini boss with a single pattern; the boss changes pattern at every third of its health, and the bar at the top marks the phases. When it falls it takes its bullets with it and always drops a power-up; the boss also lets you pick one of three rewards that lasts the whole run.

Play in your language

Orbit Panic is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Italian and French. Pick your language:

You are playing in English.