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.
Rules of Star Salvo
- Your ship fires by itself the whole time. There is no fire button anywhere on the screen.
- Drag to move it, and let go. It holds the position you left it in rather than drifting back to the centre.
- Three lives show as small triangles under the score. They are the only budget the run gives you.
- Enemies come down the screen in pods, and anything you fail to shoot eventually reaches you.
- Every fifth wave is a lighter one, fewer enemies in a single row moving slower, and it is the only breathing space the run gives you.
- There is no lobby, no level select and no loadout. Tap to start drops you straight into the run.
- The waves never stop coming. There is no final level and no win screen, only how far you got before the third life went.
- Your own shots leave the nose of the ship as thin capsules and travel straight up the screen, so what you can hit is whatever is directly above you.
- The whole run happens on one screen. Nothing scrolls sideways and there is nowhere off the edge to hide.
Controls
- Drag anywhere on screen to move the ship
- Firing is automatic, so there is nothing else to press
- Arrow keys steer the ship on a laptop
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 no continues, so a run is over the moment the third one goes
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
- Two to six minutes before the waves get you
- Last tested by us
- 2026-08-26
- Studio
- Our own game
