Y-Type

Arcade · Oldies · plays in your browser, no download

A ship, a cave that scrolls by itself, and one button that does two different things depending on how long you hold it. Y-Type is our take on the horizontal shooter the arcades were full of in the late eighties — the kind where a stage is a place, not a random corridor, and where you are expected to learn it rather than survive it.

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The ship flying over the cranes of the shipyard, the first stage of Y-Type — Shipyard, stage one: dry docks below, machinery above, and not much room in between.

What it is

You fly left to right. The cave moves on its own and never waits for you, so the game is really a long series of small decisions about where you want to be two seconds from now. One hit kills you, and you have three lives.

The rock is dangerous but not treacherous: if a wall arrives where you already are, you get pushed, not crushed. That single rule is what makes the narrow parts playable instead of unfair — you can be squeezed into a corner and still work your way out of it.

There are five stages and they are built by hand, one wall at a time, not generated. A shipyard. A corridor of timed presses. A jungle. A nest. And an abyss so narrow that the thing chasing you is as wide as the passage.

How to play

Fly	Arrow keys, or W A S D. On a phone, the knob at the bottom left.
Shoot	Tap space. On a phone, the fire button at the bottom right.
Charge	Hold space and let go. The charged shot goes through walls, and through everything standing in it.
Send the pod	Shift or Enter. On a phone, the second round button.

Charging is the only real decision in the game, and it is a decision because it costs something: while you are holding, you are not shooting. Hold too long with three fighters coming in and you die with a full cannon. Never hold at all and the bosses take forever. Everything else is reflexes; this one is a choice.

The pod

The white block riding in front of your nose is the pod, and it does three jobs. It eats one shot that would otherwise have killed you. It shoots by itself. And when you send it ahead, it flies off down the cave clearing everything in its path, and cannot be destroyed while it is out there.

The catch becomes obvious the first time it bites you: while the pod is away, you are open. Sending it into a crowd means trading your shield for the room to breathe.

The four gems

Gems drop from the enemies that carry them. Each one looks different in flight, so you can tell what you are holding without reading anything:

Red	Three ways at once, and the shots bounce off the walls. The one to have in a tunnel.
Blue	A long lance that pierces: it does not stop at the first thing it hits.
Green	A fan, wide and short. Good against anything that arrives in a group.
Yellow	Two missiles that chase. They find what you cannot see yet.

Pick up the same gem twice and it doubles.

The five stages

Shipyard, one star. Cranes, dry docks, and the first three shapes you have to learn: the fighter that flies straight, the lancer that comes in fast and leaves, and the turret bolted into the rock. At the end, a mech that walks, unloads its racks at you, then lifts off the floor.
Presses, two stars. Six turrets and four mines in a corridor where the ceiling comes down on a timer. The boss cannot be hurt while any of its four mouths is still standing: you disarm it first, and only then does the reactor open.
Jungle, three stars. Six different creatures, the most crowded stage in the game: bees, centipedes, monkeys that jump from handhold to handhold, and an ape that plants itself and throws its own fists at you. The boss is a spider that walks on four legs — it does not fly.
Nest, four stars. Beetles that follow the floor uphill and stay sealed in their shell until they open; while they are shut you cannot hurt them, and waiting costs you. Interceptors that come in, brake, hang there, and then pounce.
Abyss, five stars. The narrowest cave, the fastest scroll, and a serpent as wide as the passage itself. There are alcoves cut into the floor along the way: duck into one and it cannot reach you. They are exactly wide enough and no wider, which is the whole point.

Three things that help

Shoot the turrets early. They never move, so they are the one enemy you can deal with before you are in range. Every one you leave behind is a shot arriving later, while you are busy with something else.

Stay off the walls in the jungle. Half of what lives there is attached to the rock rather than flying. The middle of the corridor is emptier than it looks.

Hold the charge between waves, not during one. The gap after a squad dies is free time: that is where a charged shot gets paid for.

Who you are up against

Every creature in the game has its own entry, with how much it takes to kill it, how fast it moves and what it does to you — read straight out of the engine, so the page cannot say anything different from what the game actually does.

Fighter
Lancer
Turret
Mech
Ape

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