Manual

How to drive the mech. For what the run asks of you, read the rules. PLAY on the title starts a fresh run; CONTINUE, which shows while a run is saved, picks that one up at the start of its floor; HANGAR spends what your last runs brought out.

Steering schemes

There are five schemes on one cycle: twin stick, tank, dual stick, gamepad, arcade stick, and back around. The current scheme is printed bottom centre. The game starts on twin stick. On an iPad or a phone the game asks for a desktop browser or a paired controller: press any button on the pad, or any key, and the title comes up. Touching a pad on the mouse schemes switches to it by itself: the d-pad picks arcade stick, a stick picks gamepad. A or start on the title presses PLAY. (In the run the scheme cycles only by the pad's create / select; T is an arena key.)

Twin stick (default)

• W A S D or the arrow keys walk in any direction
• The mouse aims the mech: it turns to face wherever the cursor is, at once, and every round flies to the ring
• left click or space fires both guns (cyan left, magenta right). left shift dashes. Right click does nothing

Tank

• W or ↑ drives forward along the facing, S or ↓ reverses at reduced power
• A D or ← → turn
• The mouse still aims until you press a movement key. Moving the mouse hands the facing back to the mouse

Dual stick keys

• W A S D walks in any direction, the arrow keys aim. No mouse needed
• With no arrow held the facing holds where it was
• space or left click fires both guns at once. Mouse movement is ignored

Gamepad

Standard mapping, tested with a DualSense over Bluetooth in Chrome and Edge. Safari is unreliable with pads. A pad already paired before the page loads is picked up; move it and the game switches to it.

• Left stick walks (analog, a half push is a half speed walk), right stick aims
• L2 fires the left gun, R2 the right
• L1, R1 or L3 dash
• options (or PS) pauses and resumes, in any scheme
• create cycles the steering scheme, triangle mutes

Arcade stick

One 8-way lever and a bank of buttons, no second stick to aim with, so the mech faces the way you walk. Tested against the 8BitDo Arcade Stick in XInput mode (the button names below are its Xbox labels). The lever works on any of its LS / DP / RS switch positions.

• The lever walks, and the mech faces the walk at once: the eight directions are the aim
• A fires both guns. LT fires the left gun, RT the right
• X fires with the facing held: back off or circle while the guns stay on target. Y holds the facing without firing
• B, LB or RB dash
• start (or home) pauses and resumes, select cycles the steering scheme

Every scheme

• left shift (left only) dashes along the direction you are moving, not the facing, so you can dash sideways while shooting forward. No meter
• Rest the guns to charge them. Your own guns fire a charged burst; let go and it comes back, run it dry and they lock for a moment. A picked-up gun has a magazine instead; the line over your hull bar shows what you carry and what is left in it
• M mutes and unmutes. Works while paused
• Esc pauses. Click to resume. The pause menu has share and menu (back to the title)

The perk pick

Taking a hatch puts three cards on the screen and the game holds under them. 1 2 3 takes a card, or click one. On a pad, the lever, d-pad or left stick moves the highlight left and right and any fire button (or A) takes the lit card. Esc does nothing here: there is nothing to go back to.

The hangar

HANGAR on the title screen opens it over the title. Click a row to buy it when the bank covers the cost (a row you cannot afford says how much you need); DROP AT picks the sector the next run starts in; BACK or Esc returns to the title. On a pad, the d-pad or left stick walks the highlight across the rows (left and right in order, up and down to the nearest row above or below), A presses the lit one, B or start backs out. The run card and the win card take a click, space or any fire button on the pad.

The mouse is not captured

The game never takes over the cursor. Your real mouse pointer, drawn as a ring, is the aim, so it feels exactly like the desktop. Every mouse press over the field is swallowed by the game, so shift-and-click cannot open a browser menu or drag the page; right click is swallowed too. If the cursor slides off the window the mech keeps facing the last point until it comes back; a full screen browser window keeps that from happening. Switching tabs releases every key and button, so nothing stays held down.

Saved on this device

The bank, the unlocks, where you drop in and the records (deepest floor, wins, fastest win, runs, kills, the deepest endless floor) are stored in this browser only, as is the run in progress (saved at every floor start, behind CONTINUE on the title), with the volume and mute (and the arena's aim assist and mech kind). Nothing leaves the device and there are no accounts. Clearing site data resets all of it, the bank and the saved run included.

Arena (legacy, ?arena)

The game mek grew out of is still in the build, parked, at /?arena: ten arena levels on the number keys (free play, rival, titan, squad 2v2 and 3v3, duel, versus 2v2 and 3v3, tug and tug 2v2), four mech kinds on K, aim assist on G, the tuning panel on P, and a two-player lobby over WebRTC behind MULTIPLAYER. None of it is part of the run and none of it is being developed; it is there for anyone who wants it.