Shooting games

The fuse is blown: you see only what your light reaches. Find the gun, shoot what hunts you, and survive one endless, escalating night.

Button	Keyboard	Does
D-pad	Arrows / WASD	Move. Turns pressed early are remembered until the next junction. You face the way you last moved.
A	Z or K	Fire the way you're facing.
B	X or J	Hold aim: while held, your facing is locked, so you can back away and keep shooting.
Select	Shift	Sound on/off (the footer shows SND or MUTE).
Start	Enter (or P)	Start / pause / resume.

A standard USB gamepad works too. Pads that report the D-pad as an analog stick (common on cheap NES-style pads) are handled.

The first time you plug in a pad the browser doesn't recognise (most cheap USB pads), the game asks you to press A, B, Select and Start, and remembers the answer for every game on the site. Add ?padsetup to the address to ask again.

What's in the dark

• Gun: it appears somewhere in the maze. Walk over it to get 6 shots. When it's empty, a new gun turns up somewhere else after a few seconds. It glints now and then.
• Bats and spiders: touching one stuns you for 2 seconds. Shoot them for points. The spider lives in the web, top left. Bats can fly into the bunker.
• Robots: they hunt you, and one shot from a robot kills you. Destroy one and a tougher one replaces it: gray, then blue, then white (takes 2 hits), then red. From red on, robot shots break the bunker doors. The robot's eyes show in the dark, and you can hear it walking when it's close.
• Bunker: the green room in the middle. Robots and spiders can't get in and robot shots can't get through its doors, until the doors are broken.

Sound: there's a soundtrack the whole time you play: the hum of the blown fuse, a heartbeat bass, and eerie arpeggios. Its tempo is the robot's walking pace, and it speeds up as the robot gets closer to you. Each new robot colour adds layers. Inside the bunker the music goes muffled. Browsers only start sound after a key press or click; a gamepad button may not count in every browser, so press any key once if it's silent.

Points: spider 50, bat 100, robot 150 × its number. Extra life every 5,000.

Five beams run off to a single vanishing point on the horizon. Hop between them, shoot fifteen white saucers to clear each sector, then try to torpedo the sector ship as it crosses the far end of the field.

Button	Keyboard	Does
D-pad	Arrows	Hop from beam to beam.
A	Z or K	Laser.
B	X or J	Torpedo: three per sector. Torpedoes destroy anything; lasers bounce off some things.
Select	Shift	Side view: the same scene seen from the side, showing how the picture is drawn in perspective.
Start	Enter	Play / pause.

M mutes the sound. A standard USB gamepad works too.

The first time you plug in a pad the browser doesn't recognise (most cheap USB pads), the game asks you to press A, B, Select and Start, and remembers the answer for every game on the site. Add ?padsetup to the address to ask again.

Later sectors bring new things down the beams: yellow chirpers are a bonus, sparks are to dodge, and green blockers can only be torpedoed or avoided.

Choose a game on the title screen with Up and Down, then press Start.

• Classic. Five beams run off to a single vanishing point on the horizon. Hop between them, shoot fifteen white saucers to clear each sector, then try to torpedo the sector ship as it crosses the far end of the field.
• 360. The beams wrap into a tube, and you ride its rim as a claw. Every sector changes the tube's shape (octagon, square, star, U, steps, diamond) and its colors. The sector ship circles the far end once.
• Curl. Flat sectors, and every third one the beams curl up into a tube, then lay flat again.

Button	Keyboard	Does
D-pad	Arrows	Hop from beam to beam. Up and Down choose a game on the title screen.
A	Z or K	Laser.
B	X or J	Torpedo: three per sector. Torpedoes destroy anything; lasers bounce off some things.
Select	Shift	Side view: the same scene seen from the side, showing how the picture is drawn in perspective. Inside the tube it shows a slice down the tube's length.
Start	Enter	Play / pause.

M mutes the sound. A standard USB gamepad works too.

The first time you plug in a pad the browser doesn't recognise (most cheap USB pads), the game asks you to press A, B, Select and Start, and remembers the answer for every game on the site. Add ?padsetup to the address to ask again.

On a phone or tablet a touch controller appears: a D-pad, B and A, Select and Start. Held upright, it sits under the screen like a Game Boy; turned sideways, the D-pad and buttons move into the margins beside the screen. On an iPhone, Share → Add to Home Screen opens it without Safari's bars.

Later sectors bring new things down the beams: yellow chirpers are a bonus, sparks are to dodge, and green blockers can only be torpedoed or avoided.

The screen is drawn the way a 1981 vector monitor drew it: lines of light on phosphor that glow and fade, brighter at the corners where the beam turned. The size button in the corner cycles FIT (the whole picture), FILL (the world widens to your window's shape, no black bars) and FULL (FILL with the browser hidden; not offered on iPhone, which doesn't allow it). The PHOSPHOR button next to it sets how long the glow lasts, how much it blooms, and whether the beam flickers. V and G step through the same settings from the keyboard, and F toggles fullscreen.

High scores are kept for each game separately, in this browser on this computer.

Six buildings and three cannon posts stand on a sea wall. Raiders fly across the sky in four altitude bands, left to right and right to left, and each time they turn round they come back one band lower. Once a raider reaches the lowest band it dives and bombs whatever it's aiming for. Shoot it down before then.

Two versions. On the title screen, Left/Right chooses between them, and each keeps its own high score.

• Moonlit: a clear night. You can see every raider; the searchlights just brighten the sky.
• Searchlight (hard): the sky is dark. You see a raider only where a searchlight beam touches it. You steer one beam yourself. Two more sweep on their own from the lamp towers, but only while those towers stand. Outside the beams, a raider shows only as a winking running light, and you can hear each one throbbing on its side of the screen, faster the lower it flies. You can shoot blind if you trust your ears.

The tide rises. Every building that falls lets the sea climb higher up the wall, flooding it from the low end. When all six buildings are gone, or all three cannons, the city falls. Every 10,000 points one fallen building is rebuilt and the sea draws back.

Button	Keyboard	Does
B	X or J	Fire the left cannon (it shoots up and to the right).
A	Z, K or Space	Fire the right cannon (it shoots up and to the left).
D-pad Up	Up or W	Fire the centre cannon (straight up).
D-pad Left / Right	Arrows / A, D	Steer your searchlight.
Select	Shift	Flare: lights the whole sky for about three seconds. You start with three and get one more each wave (five at most).
Start	Enter (or P)	Start / pause. The pause screen shows the controls and points; Select there turns sound on or off.

A standard USB gamepad works too, including cheap pads that report the D-pad as an analog stick. On the keyboard, M also turns sound on or off.

The first time you plug in a pad the browser doesn't recognise (most cheap USB pads), the game asks you to press A, B, Select and Start, and remembers the answer for every game on the site. Add ?padsetup to the address to ask again.

Browsers start sound only after a key press or click (a gamepad button may not count), so press any key once if it is silent.

Raiders: skiff 100, barge 250 (takes two hits), hawk 300 (fast), bandit 1000 (stays high and bombs from the top band, from wave 3). A bomb shot out of the air is 50. Each wave you hold earns a bonus for everything still standing. Waves get faster.