Star Salvo
About Star Salvo
Star Salvo is our own arcade shooter. You drag your ship around and it fires on its own, so there is no fire button competing for your thumb. Waves come down in formation and shoot back. You get three lives and no continues.
How to play
Drag anywhere to fly your ship. Shooting is automatic. Dodge what the formations fire back at you. Three lives, and the waves keep coming.
Controls
- Drag anywhere on screen to move the ship
- Firing is automatic, so there is nothing else to press
- Arrow keys on a keyboard
What makes it worth playing
- Auto-fire, so one thumb does everything
- Formations shoot back, so it is a dodging game as much as a shooting one
- Every fifth wave is a lighter one, giving the pressure a rhythm
- Formations widen and deepen as you progress, up to a cap
- A moment of invulnerability after a hit so you are not killed twice by the same shot
- Three lives and your best score kept on the device
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-08-26.
Tips from playing it
- Stay low and central. Most incoming fire is aimed where you were, not where you are, so small constant movement beats big dashes.
- Kill the outside columns first. They are the ones that get behind you.
- Use the breather wave to reposition to the middle rather than to chase points at the edges.
- After you take a hit you are briefly invulnerable. That is the moment to fly through the mess, not to retreat from it.
Notes from building it
Auto-fire was the first decision and it settled most of the others. On a touchscreen a fire button costs you a thumb, and a shooter played with one thumb on a button and one on movement leaves no room for the phone itself. Taking the button away means the whole screen is a control surface. After that the design problem is pacing, so every fifth wave is deliberately lighter: fewer enemies, in one row instead of three, moving slower. Without it the game is a straight line from easy to overwhelming, and players quit at the point where the line crosses their skill rather than at the point where they are satisfied. The breather also gives you somewhere to recover position, which matters because the punishing part of the game is not the shooting, it is being trapped at the edge of the screen.
More from the studio: why difficulty needs a rhythm and how we test a game.
We wrote about this one
- Why our endless games get easier every twenty seconds. A difficulty curve that only goes up stops feeling hard and starts feeling unfair. Here is the rest beat we build into Lane Rush and Star Salvo, and why.
- Category
- Shooting
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Players
- One player.
- Difficulty
- Approachable at first, genuinely busy by wave fifteen
- Typical session
- 2 to 6 minutes a run
- Last tested by us
- 2026-08-26
- Studio
- Our own game
