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Swarm
Arcade · Oldies · plays in your browser, no download
Rows of creatures stepping sideways and down, three shelters that crumble as they are hit, and one shot on screen at a time. The defining thing about it — that they get faster as you kill them — was never designed. It was a fault in the hardware.
Where it comes from
1978: rows of aliens coming down, a base sliding left and right, four shelters wearing away. This is the game that invented sitting in front of a screen and defending something, and almost everything since is a variation on it.
What hardly anybody remembers is that it speeds up on its own, and not by choice: the machine had to draw the aliens one at a time, and the fewer were left, the faster it drew them. A limitation of the hardware became the tension of the ending, and it has been copied on purpose for forty years.
How to play
| Move | Left and right arrows, or the pad on a phone. You cannot go up or down. |
|---|---|
| Fire | Space, or the button. One shot on screen at a time — miss and you wait. |
| The shelters | Three blocks that absorb fire from both sides. Your own shots eat them too. |
| Losing | Hit, or the creatures reach the ground. |
One shot at a time is the rule everything else hangs on. It makes every trigger pull a commitment, and it is why firing at the bottom row is usually better than firing into the crowd.
Our version
Thirty-six in formation, three shelters that erode honestly, and the acceleration kept — because without it the ending is flat.
Three things that help
Clear a column, not a row. Taking out one full column from the outside in widens the gap they have to cross before they step down, which buys you real time.
Shoot through your own shelter as little as possible. Every shot you fire upward through a block takes a bite out of it, and you will want that block later far more than you want this alien now.
Do not stand still. Their fire comes from the lowest creature in each column, so where you are safe changes every time you kill something.