ASTRO 2.5D

01 — CONTROLS

The ship turns on its own axis. Thrust is applied along the nose, so direction and speed are set independently.

W / ↑

Thrust forward. With SHIFT held, this is an afterburner burn. Both are offline during an engine recharge.

S / ↓

Reverse thrust. Swappable with W in FLIGHT SETTINGS if you prefer reverse on up.

A D / ← →

Rotate. Rate is fixed and does not change with speed.

SPACE

Fire. Hold to fire continuously; each weapon has its own cycle time.

SHIFT

Afterburner. See 03 ENGINES.

F

Deploy a mine. See 05 ORDNANCE.

1

Select slot 1, laser array.

2

Select slot 2, heavy weapon. Locked until you have picked one up.

3

Select slot 3, Hyper Destructor. Locked until you find one.

ESC

Pause. Also returns to the last menu you opened from.

¬ ×2

Within 2.5 seconds, opens the sandbox menu. See 12 SANDBOX.

GAMEPAD

Any connected pad is detected automatically and the HUD reads GAMEPAD instead of KEYBOARD. Standard mapping.

Left stick / D-pad

Rotate and thrust, same as the keyboard.

A / cross

Fire. Also confirms dialogs.

B / circle or LT / L2

Afterburner.

X / square

Deploy a mine.

Y / triangle

Slot 3, Hyper Destructor.

LB / L1

Slot 1, laser array.

RB / R1

Slot 2, heavy weapon.

Start

Pause.

02 — SHIP SYSTEMS

HULL

Starts at 100. Damage is permanent within a life. At 0 the ship is lost and you respawn at the centre of the arena with a 3-second grace period during which nothing can hit you.

DESTRUCTION

Losing the hull is not an instant menu. The ship comes apart on camera over exactly 3 seconds — the wreck tumbles, six secondary detonations walk outward through the hull, and the arena keeps drifting behind it. Nothing can be shot, collected or collided with during the scene; the simulation is stopped and only the wreck, the debris and the light keep moving. When the three seconds are up the checkpoint menu opens, and a new life begins from it.

SHIELD

Absorbs damage before the hull, and is consumed first. One point of shield soaks one and a half points of incoming damage, so a full array covers 66 — enough to swallow the 60-point ceiling on a single hit outright, with nothing reaching the hull. A shield hit of any size imposes a 5-second lockout before it starts regenerating, then refills at 1.2 per second. Regeneration stops entirely if the shield is reduced to zero — the array has to be brought back by a shield pod.

SHIELD PIERCING

Small-arms fire and collisions only transfer 45% of the damage that gets past the shield. Mines, seekers and warheads bypass this and apply their full value to the hull.

ARENA

The field wraps. Flying off one edge re-enters from the opposite side; there is no boundary to crash into and no way to get cornered.

03 — ENGINES

The afterburner is a duty cycle, not a fuel tank. You get a fixed burn allowance, and when it runs out the engines force a fixed recharge before they will fire again. There is no partial top-up, no way to bank charge, and no penalty for using it.

The thrusters share that clock. While the recharge is running the whole engine bank is down and the ship coasts — holding W buys nothing, and there is no normal-thrust way around a spent engine.

The recharge is 2 seconds on every difficulty. Only the burn length changes, so a pilot who learns the rhythm on one difficulty keeps the same rhythm on the others.

CADET

7 second burn, 2 second recharge — 9 second cycle.

VETERAN

5 second burn, 2 second recharge — 7 second cycle.

ACE

3 second burn, 2 second recharge — 5 second cycle.

READING THE METER

The ENGINE BOOST bar sits beside HULL and SHIELD and tracks whichever clock is actually running.

Green, draining

Burn remaining. The number counts down.

Orange, lit

Burning right now.

Grey, draining

Recharging. The bar empties as the recharge completes, then refills to full. The thrusters are offline for the whole of it.

Orange, blinking

Spent and waiting on the recharge clock.

NOTES

• Boost only burns while you are also thrusting. Holding SHIFT on its own costs nothing.
• A spent engine takes the thrusters down with it. Hold W straight through the recharge and you coast for the whole two seconds; thrust returns the instant the recharge lands.
• Burn speed is 15.5 units per second against 10.5 under normal thrust.
• You can hold SHIFT through the recharge; the engines will catch the instant they are ready. Releasing and re-pressing does the same thing.
• Charge is not carried between lives or between runs. You always respawn with a full tank.

04 — WEAPONS

Two upgrade ladders and one rare. Laser and heavy weapons are separate progressions; you can only have one of each equipped, but you keep the other and can switch at any time. Weapons come from pods dropped by destroyed asteroids and drones, so collecting is how you upgrade.

SLOT 1 — LASER ARRAY

Free ammunition, short cycle, no reload. The top of the tree is the widest field of fire in the game.

SINGLE LASER

1 shot

DUAL LASER

2 shots

TRIPLE LASER

3 shots

QUAD LASER

4 shots

RAPID BANK 2X4

8 shots in two stacked rows of four, on the fastest cycle in the game.

SLOT 2 — HEAVY

Costs missiles from a magazine that only a matching weapon pod refills — there is no reload timer and no trickle. Run it dry and the heavy slot stays dead until a pod turns up, which is what makes a pod worth flying toward. Far more damage per shot and splash damage on impact. Every tier out-damages the laser tier at the same rung, so upgrading the heavy slot is never a step backwards. The two nuke warheads sit below their neighbours on raw single-target damage on purpose — they are worth taking for the blast radius, not the hit.

SINGLE MISSILE

1 missile, small splash

DUAL MISSILES

2 missiles, small splash

DUAL HIGH-YIELD

2 missiles, heavier hit and splash

TRIPLE HIGH-YIELD

3 missiles, heavier hit and splash

MINI NUKE WARHEAD

1 warhead, large blast

DUEL MINI NUKES

2 warheads, large blast

HYPER MISSILE

1 warhead, largest blast in the game

SLOT 3 — HYPER DESTRUCTOR

Rare. Approximately a 1-in-36 chance from any weapon pod. It is not an upgrade tier and has no ladder — it either exists in your hold or it does not.

When fired it discharges an instantaneous 90-degree arc centred on the nose, wiping out everything inside it: asteroids, drones, hostile mines and incoming enemy fire. It is not a projectile, so there is no travel time to lead and no way to miss at close range.

One discharge per wave. It re-arms automatically at the start of the next wave, and only at the start of the next wave — if you die mid-wave holding a charge, you keep the charge; you do not get a second shot for the same wave.

Firing on a spent Destructor does nothing but a dry-fire click, so the meter and the SPENT state on the button are the only things you need to watch.

05 — ORDNANCE

Mines are dropped behind you with F and sit on the field until something sets them off. They destroy drones and asteroids in a blast and are not consumed by arming.

CARRIED

Up to 4.

RESUPPLY

Topped back up to 2 at the start of every wave. This is a floor, not a reset — if you are carrying 4 you keep all 4.

ARMING

Arms on a short delay after deployment so you cannot blow yourself up on the drop.

OWN MINES ON ACE

On CADET and VETERAN your own mines are completely inert against you. On ACE they are live: your proximity fuse is armed, and one of your own mines will destroy your ship outright, shields and all. Fly away from what you drop.

06 — HOSTILE CONTACTS

One or two hostile mines spawn each wave and home on your ship under acceleration, so an overshoot curves back rather than sailing past. They announce themselves with a caution lamp and a voice callout from about 12 units out, which buys at least two seconds of warning before the blast — enough to turn and open the range if you are already pointing the right way, and not much more if you are not. A seeker has 22 points of health, so what it costs you depends on what you are holding: the single laser needs 10 shots, the dual 8, the triple 6, the quad 5, and the rapid bank puts it down in one 8-shot volley. The single and dual missile need two; every warhead tier needs one.

On contact they detonate for up to 60 damage, spent against your shield first and then the hull. That figure is a hard ceiling — a full shield absorbs all of it and your hull is untouched; a partial shield spends what it has and passes the remainder to the hull, still capped at 60 total.

Seekers disarm when you clear a wave, so one will not chase you down the gate flight.

07 — WAVES & SECTORS

Each wave spawns a set of asteroids and drones. Clear every drone and a jump gate opens. Fly into it to jump to the next sector.

GATE

Ignores the gate and it will jump you anyway after 22 seconds. There is no way to stall a run.

JUMP

You arrive at the centre of the new arena with 2.25 seconds of the same grace a checkpoint gives — nothing can touch you — and your hull untouched. Use it to read the field before committing.

SCALING

Asteroid count and drone count both rise with sector number. Drone types unlock as you go deeper: interceptors from sector 1, then gunners and weavers.

SUPER UNITS

Some drones spawn as elites, marked and worth far more. The chance rises with difficulty.

08 — SCORE & RANK

Every kill extends a chain. The chain window is 3.2 seconds and each link adds 7% to the score of the next kill, so a dense cluster of small rocks is worth far more than the same value spread out.

Experience is awarded per event and carries between runs. The level curve is 300 × (level − 1)^1.55, which means early levels come quickly and later ones do not. There are 50 awards across five groups — flight, combat, power, survival and score — and they are tracked permanently in your pilot profile.

09 — DIFFICULTY

Chosen at the briefing. It cannot be changed mid-run, and it sets the engine burn length.

CADET

9 lives, 24 missiles, slowest lasers, enemies hit softer and fire slower, 7 second boost, own mines are safe.

VETERAN

5 lives, 20 missiles, baseline values, 5 second boost, own mines are safe.

ACE

3 lives, 16 missiles, fastest lasers, enemies hit 28% harder and fire 24% faster, 3 second boost, your own mines are lethal to you.

10 — ALERTS & VOICE

The monitor speaks and raises caution lamps for the states that matter: low hull, shield failure, low ammunition, incoming hostile mines, and so on. Lamps stay lit for as long as the condition holds; the spoken callout fires once on the rising edge, so sustained damage will not flood the voice queue.

Voice can be turned off in FLIGHT SETTINGS, and separately there are settings there for glow, scanlines, reduced motion and thrust inversion.

11 — SAVES & RECOVERY

Everything is stored in this browser's local storage. Nothing is sent anywhere. There are three keys: settings, your pilot profile, and the current run.

The run auto-saves. If you close the tab mid-flight, CONTINUE RUN on the main menu brings it back exactly where you left it, with your score, sector, weapons, mines and engine charge intact.

RECOVER STATE takes a full recovery key — a single line beginning ASTRO26-. It encodes the entire run plus a checksum, so a damaged key is rejected rather than half-restored. Copy it from the pause menu before you close the tab if you want a run that survives clearing site data.

Progress lives in this browser only. Clearing site data deletes your profile, awards and rank. There is no account and no cloud copy.

12 — SANDBOX

Press ¬ twice within 2.5 seconds to open the sandbox menu. Toggles include god mode, unlimited ammunition, maximum weapons, maximum mines, overcharged weapon damage, and destroying enemy ships automatically shortly after they spawn.

While any sandbox toggle is on, a faint CHEATER mark sits over the play area, and no experience and no awards are earned for that run. The mark is deliberately hard to miss. Turn the toggles off before you start a run you intend to score.