Nebula: Solar Rift (Demo)

How to play Nebula: Solar Rift

1. On the start screen, tap ⚡ Start to cycle through the twelve weapons and choose the one you launch with. The game remembers your choice. Then press Launch.
2. Just fly. Steer with WASD, the arrow keys or the mouse. Your weapons fire by themselves at the nearest threats — there is no fire button.
3. Collect XP. Destroyed aliens drop gems. Fly over them to fill the bar.
4. Level up. Each level pauses the game and deals you three cards: a new weapon, a new mod, an upgrade to something you already own, or an active ability. Pick with a tap, the 1 / 2 / 3 keys, or the arrows and Enter.
5. Build. You can hold three weapons, three mods and one active ability. Nothing you pick is ever replaced — it only levels up, to a maximum of level 5.
6. Evolve. Take a weapon and its paired mod both to level 5 and the weapon evolves into a far stronger form.
7. Use your ability with a click, Space or E. It recharges on a timer and stays with you for the whole run.
8. Survive. A mini-boss arrives every fifth wave. Every fifteenth wave you jump to a new galaxy, and a bigger boss is waiting there.

Controls

On touch devices the joystick can sit on the left or the right — switch it from the start or pause screen, and the game remembers. The ❓ button opens the in-game field guide to every weapon, mod, ability and pickup.

Weapons, paired mods and evolutions

Every weapon has exactly one mod that unlocks its evolution. The mod is useful in its own right — the pairing is a bonus on top.

Eight more mods pair with nothing and are taken purely for what they do: Thruster (speed), Shield Matrix (damage reduction), Repair Core (regeneration), XP Magnet (pickup range), Vampiric Core (heal on hit), Kinetic Driver (knockback), Glass Cannon (more damage, less hull) and Adrenaline (faster attacks the lower your hull).

Abilities and pickups

• Active abilities — you get one per run: Repair Pulse (restores hull), Shield Burst (a moment of invulnerability), Stasis Field (freezes nearby enemies), Black Hole (drags enemies in and crushes them) or Hyperspeed (a damage-free dash through whatever is in the way). Each can be levelled to 5.
• Pickups drop during the fight: Repair, Shield, Damage Surge (+60% weapon damage for a while), Time Slow, Helper Drone and Magnet Pulse (pulls in all the XP on screen). The rare Nuke wipes every ordinary enemy on screen — you keep their XP — and staggers bosses.
• Rerolls: you get five per run. A reroll deals three fresh cards.
• Swap: from level 30 you may, once per run, trade a weapon or mod for a different one at the same level.
• After you max everything the level-ups keep coming. Each one becomes a stat point to spend on Vitality (hull), Armor (damage reduction), Agility (speed), Precision (crit chance) or Ferocity (crit damage).

Galaxies and bosses

A run starts in Sol Frontier. Every fifteen waves you warp onward — to Crimson Nebula, Toxic Expanse, Frozen Reach and Void Core — and after those five the game keeps generating new galaxies for as long as you survive. Each warp is a real step up in enemy health and damage, and most galaxies give their ordinary enemies a signature trait: faster movement, splitting, shields, phasing, or bursting into a ring of shots when destroyed. Every third warp is guarded by an elite boss rather than a regular one.

Tips & strategy

• Plan your pairs from the first card. With only three mod slots and no way to discard a pick, a mod that pairs with nothing you own is a slot that can never unlock an evolution.
• Several pairing mods are strong on their own. Power Reactor adds weapon damage, Overclock Chip adds attack speed and Hull Plating adds hull — so building toward Nova Lance, Hive Fleet or Starcore Mortar costs you nothing along the way.
• Spend rerolls on the card that completes a pair, not on early picks where almost anything helps.
• Keep moving in wide circles. Enemies converge from every side; a steady arc keeps the swarm bunched behind you, where area weapons do the most work.
• Save the ability for the moment you are boxed in. Shield Burst and Hyperspeed both get you out of a surround; Stasis Field and Black Hole buy the space to collect XP safely.
• Treat the swap as a repair. It exists to fix one early pick that turned out not to fit — it keeps the level, so nothing is lost.

How it's built

Nebula: Solar Rift is one JavaScript file drawing to an HTML canvas. Ships, aliens, bosses and backdrops are drawn in code and the sound is synthesized with the Web Audio API, so there are no image or audio files to download. Runs are temporary by design — nothing carries over from one to the next, and nothing about a run is sent anywhere. A shared result carries its numbers inside the link and the image rather than in a database. The only things kept on your device are your starting weapon, your joystick side and your volume settings.

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