A vertical shooter with auto-fire
Brimstone is a free vertical shooter for your browser, in the tradition of the classic space shooters, only the battlefield is the sky. Your light fires by itself. All you have to do is steer, and be somewhere useful when the host arrives.
Demons come down in three kinds: fast swoopers, gunners that stop and shoot, and heavy brutes. You have three lives, there is no timer, and the game ends only when the last life goes.
How to play Brimstone
- Steer the angel with the arrow keys or WASD, or press and drag. Fire is automatic from the first frame, so there is no fire button.
- Shoot the demons as they come down. Swoopers die in one hit (60 points), gunners take two (130) and brutes take eight (300).
- Dodge bullets and bodies. Touching a demon costs a life and destroys that demon, with no points. After any hit you are invulnerable for 2 seconds and every enemy bullet on screen disappears.
- Pick up the gold halos that drop from some destroyed demons. Each one upgrades your wings to two bullets, then three, for ten seconds.
- When your lives run out, THE LINE BROKE appears with your score. Press Enter or Space, or tap, to try again.
Controls
- Keyboard: ← ↑ ↓ → or W A S D, with diagonals. There is no fire key.
- Mouse or touch: press and drag. The ship follows your finger and sits a little below it so you can see it.
- Phone: an on-screen arrow pad appears under the board.
- P pauses, Enter or Space (or a tap) restarts, Esc goes back to the game list. The ship cannot go into the top 42 percent of the board.
Scoring and rules
A swooper is worth 60 points, a gunner 130 and a brute 300. A halo you pick up when your wings are already at their best gives 200. There are no combos and no penalties, and letting a demon slip past the bottom costs nothing.
The waves get harder with time. For the first 9 seconds only swoopers come. Gunners join after that and brutes after about 24 seconds. New demons arrive more often until around 50 seconds in, and swoopers fall faster the longer you play. Every 14th kill drops a halo, and any kill has a 7 percent chance to drop one. The wing upgrade lasts ten seconds and then drops back to a single shot in one step. Getting hit does not take it away.
Tips to score higher
- Sidestep after the shot leaves, not before. A gunner aims at where you are when it fires, and the bullet then flies in a straight line at a fixed speed.
- Kill gunners first. They stop at a fixed height, never leave, and fire again every 1.4 to 2.1 seconds for as long as they live.
- Take every halo. Two or three bullets at the same fire rate make a big difference against a brute with eight hit points.
- Your hit circle is smaller than the ship you see, so you can slip through gaps that look blocked.
- Do not park straight under a brute. It fires a fan of three bullets, so stay off to one side.
- Use the 2 seconds after a hit. The screen is clear of bullets, so reposition, or ram swoopers to open a path (no points, no damage).
Questions
- Do I need a button to shoot?
- No. Fire is automatic. You only steer.
- Do I lose my wing upgrade when I am hit?
- No. A hit costs a life but the upgrade stays until its ten seconds run out.
- Can I play Brimstone on my phone?
- Yes. Drag on the board or use the arrow pad. Your best score is saved in your browser.