One ship. One planet. Three bosses — and then they come round again.
Galaxy Wars is the whole arcade in one screen: drag your ship, it auto-fires, and you burn down waves of alien invaders before they slip past you to the planet below. Simple to pick up — but with three invader types, three escalating bullet-hell bosses on a fixed schedule (2,000 / 4,500 / 10,000), a green-and-blue world that scars exactly where each invader lands, fourteen achievements, seven ship colours, and a full chiptune audio layer. Still one thumb, still no menus. (v1.0 — Released; game build D.)
STORY & LORE
The last line
There's a planet under you and everything else coming down from the dark. You are the only thing in between. Every invader you miss — whether it clips your ship or drifts past you to the surface — burns a scar into the planet, and you've only got three hearts to give.
Simple on purpose
No power-ups, no shop, no story to sit through. The brief was one sentence: move to aim, auto-fire, don't let them through. Depth comes from escalation and the boss, not from stacking systems on a good core.
HOW IT PLAYS
Drag to move
Your ship follows your finger (or mouse) along the bottom with a little weighty lag. On desktop the arrow keys work, and so do A and D. You never fire manually — the ship auto-streams bullets — so all your attention is on positioning. Press P any time to pause.
Protect the planet
The green-and-blue world on the horizon is what you're defending: continents, coastal shelves and drifting cloud bands, drawn on the curve of the horizon. An invader costs a heart two ways — colliding with your ship, or reaching the surface. A surface hit punches a crater into the planet at the exact x it came down: ejecta blanket, raised rim, magma pooled in the bottom and cracks running out of it. Three hearts, so the most scars a run can leave is three. Enemy and boss bullets can hurt YOU, but never damage the planet.
Escalation — slower than it used to be
Invaders fall quicker and spawn closer together the longer you survive and the higher you score. Build D halved that ramp: top speed now arrives around score 2,400 (roughly the first boss) instead of by score 1,000, and about 15% fewer invaders arrive per second at every point on the curve. The retro march speeds up with the game and also had its ramp eased. New enemy types still unlock as your score climbs.
The bosses — 2,000 / 4,500 / 10,000
Three giant alien bosses arrive on fixed score markers, each a three-phase bullet-hell duel. Phase 1 throws slow radial rings and aimed shots; Phase 2 winds up into a sweeping spiral; Phase 3 goes full danmaku with dense aimed fans. Boss 2 and boss 3 carry 50% and 100% more health than the first. Empty the health bar to clear every bullet on screen and bank a bonus. Beating the 10,000 boss is the real ending of the game.
Prestige laps
Survive past the third boss and the cycle starts again 10,000 points later — 12,000 / 14,500 / 20,000, then 22,000 / 24,500 / 30,000, and on. Each lap makes every boss 5% tougher (health and the kill bonus alike) and the HUD marks the lap with a ★. Almost nobody will see a second-lap boss 3; there is an achievement waiting if you do.
Ship colours
Seven paint jobs, bought with Tickets in the Prize Vault or from the quick shop under "About this game" on the game's page. There is no shop inside Galaxy Wars on purpose — the game only reads which colours your account owns, so a colour picked anywhere applies on the very next frame. Camo is dithered pixel by pixel; chrome and gold carry a highlight that sweeps across the hull as you fly.
INVADERS
Three descending threats, unlocking as you score. Build D pays out by how much trouble each one is.
BOSSES
Fixed score markers, three phases each. After the third they repeat 10,000 points later, 5% tougher every lap.
SHIP COLOURS
Bought with Tickets in the Prize Vault or the quick shop on the game page. Cosmetic only — no colour plays better.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Fourteen. The clean-run three are the hard ones; No More Waves is the grail.
GALLERY
VERSION HISTORY
- BOSSES ON A SCHEDULE. The boss no longer arrives "every 3,500 points from wherever you happen to be" — there are three of them, at 2,000, 4,500 and 10,000, and beating the third is the real ending. Boss 2 and 3 have 50% and 100% more health than the first.
- PRESTIGE LAPS. Past the third boss the cycle repeats 10,000 points later (12,000 / 14,500 / 20,000, then 22,000 / 24,500 / 30,000 …), each lap 5% tougher in both boss health and kill bonus. The HUD names the boss and marks the lap with a ★.
- IT NO LONGER GOES FRANTIC IN A MINUTE. The falling-speed ramp used to hit its ceiling by score 1,000; it now climbs half as fast to a slightly lower ceiling, reaching top speed around score 2,400. The chiptune march had the same treatment.
- ABOUT 15% FEWER INVADERS per second, at every point on the difficulty curve — the floor between spawns went from 0.38s to 0.45s. The yellow zig-zaggers also lost their speed bonus and now fall slightly slower than the grunts rather than faster.
- PAID BY DIFFICULTY. The 2-HP gunner that shoots back is now worth 40 points (was 25) and the zig-zagger 20 (was 15); grunts stay at 10.
- A WORLD WORTH DEFENDING. The planet gained continents built from overlapping lobes, pale coastal shelves, inland shading and drifting cloud bands, all sitting on the curve of the horizon.
- CRATERS WHERE THEY LAND. Impact scars are no longer decoration placed at random — each one is punched at the exact x the invader came down, with an ejecta blanket, a raised rim, magma pooled in the bottom and cracks radiating out.
- TEN NEW ACHIEVEMENTS (fourteen total): First Contact / Second Wave / World Saved for each boss; Not A Scratch / Perfect Guard / Flawless Defence for reaching boss 1, 2 and 3 with the planet undamaged; Second Lap and No More Waves for prestige bosses; Thousand Invaders for 1,000 kills across runs; and the secret I Love Aliens for finishing a run on exactly zero.
- SEVEN SHIP COLOURS bought with Tickets — red and blue (250), purple (600), camo (1,400), chrome (2,500), gold (5,000) — from the Prize Vault or the new quick shop under "About this game". There is still no shop inside the game; it only reads what your account owns, and refuses to paint a colour you do not have.
- A and D now move the ship, alongside the arrow keys.
- Added four achievements: Boss Slayer (beat the boss), Triple Threat (beat three bosses in one run), Four Digits (score over 1,000), and Untouchable (score over 4,000 without being hit). All verified firing.
- Graduated to v1.0 — Released: the game now clears the full quality checklist (fun, juice, audio, mobile, leaderboard, achievements, wiki).
- Two new invader types: a small fast YELLOW zig-zagger, and a NEON-BLUE square gunner with 2 HP that fires aimed bolts at you (its shots hurt you but never the planet).
- Added a three-phase ALIEN BOSS every 3,500 points — a Mushihimesama-style bullet-hell duel (radial rings → spiral → dense aimed fans) with its own health bar; clearing it wipes all bullets and banks +500.
- Difficulty now ramps over time as well as score (faster spawns, faster falls, faster march) so it never gets boring.
- Redrew the ship and invaders as animated pixel Space-Invaders sprites; the ship has a flickering thruster.
- The planet now takes visible damage: each surface hit sears a glowing molten scorch into the crust, flashes it red, and dims the atmosphere.
- Rebuilt the audio as a retro chiptune layer: an accelerating Space-Invaders march plus square-wave/noise SFX for shots, kills, hits and the boss — no more generic beeps.
- Added pause (P) with an on-screen overlay.
- First wiki, documenting the planet-defence rework (game v0.8, Beta).
- Added the planet on the horizon: invaders that reach the surface — not just ones that hit your ship — now cost a heart.
- Added particle explosions on every kill and every hit, plus screen-shake and SFX.
- Tuned for mobile: drag-to-move verified at phone viewport; marked mobile-friendly.
- Studio: John (one of the site's original founder prototypes).