Heat Death

An arcade-style highscore-focused twin stick shooter. In my experience it runs best in Chrome or Edge, but should be playable in most modern browsers.

How to play

Dual Stick Controls

The dual stick controls with a gamepad are the recommend way to play. Visit https://html5gamepad.com/ to see if your browser supports your gamepad (you may have to unplug it, plug it back in, and press some buttons for it to be recognized).

You may also play dual stick with the keyboard, but there are a lot of buttons so it can be a bit tricky!

You can remap your controller or the keyboard controls by pressing the controller icon to the right of the game window after pressing play.

If you have an Xbox-style controller, the default mapping is as follows:

"Simple" Controls

If you don't have a gamepad with two sticks or you prefer to use fewer buttons on the keyboard, you can try the simple controls! You will automatically aim in the opposite direction you're moving so that you can shoot enemies chasing you. If you hold shoot, you will lock your aim in place and strafe. Let go of shoot to aim somewhere else.

You can remap your controller or the keyboard controls by pressing the controller icon to the right of the game window after pressing play.

Rules

• Objective: gain heat by shooting enemies
• Collect power gems to fill the power bar
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• Hold power button to charge ability (1...2...3)
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• Release power button to spend power on numbered ability

Number/Cost	Ability Name	Description	Video
1 power	Defrag	Collects debris in an area and converts it to firepower. The number of extra shots you get is directly proportional to the amount of debris it collects, so try to place it where it can collect the most.
2 power	Cloak	Briefly prevent enemies from chasing and aiming at you. If all players are cloaked, enemies will move towards and shoot at random locations.
3 power	Remote Backup	Creates a backup on the field which prevents one death. Instead of dying, you will be teleported to the backup you most recently placed. You can have up to 5 backups on the field at a time.

Tips

• Position yourself to kill high-value targets at the beginning of each level.
• You are briefly invulnerable right when enemies spawn. Look for the flashing cross on your ship.
• Dying resets your power to 2, so use your abilities proactively to avoid wasting power.
• Use defrag liberally; it's the least expensive and it's the only ability that directly increases your offense.
• You are not invulnerable while cloaked; be careful around erratically moving enemies.
• You are briefly invulnerable after a remote backup triggers. Follow the line to find yourself after the teleport so you can regain control before the invulnerability runs out.
• Remote backups are expensive; sometimes it's better to prioritize offense over defense.
• You slowly lose heat over time; play faster to get higher scores.
• Chain gems by collecting them the instant they flash your color for bonus points.
• The gray number near the top left of the HUD is the heat remaining until you're award an extra life.
• Some enemies drop green slime when they die. Slime will slow you down when you move through it, so try to avoid those areas or use defrag to clean them up.
• Look at the post game stats to figure out where you're dying and what you could do better!

Inspired by Robotron and Smash T.V.

Source Code

Full source code is available here: https://github.com/Gate88/heat-death/