Néon Starship

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How to play

Cross a giant creature organ by organ, from the throat to the lungs, the stomach and the heart: bring down the boss of each organ, dodge its traps, and defeat the creature to face the next one, tougher.

Game rules

1. You fly a fighter inside a creature. The scenery scrolls to the left, your cannon fires forward by itself, and you move in all four directions to dodge and line up. The campaign has four organs in order: the throat, the lungs, the acid stomach and the heart.
2. Each organ has its own enemy mix, enemies a little tougher than in the one before, a trap and a boss: the Larynx (throat, 150 hit points), the Alveolar Mother (lungs, 190), the Pylorus (stomach, 230) and the Ventricle (heart, 230). Beating a boss scores points and opens the next organ, after a curtain of flesh.
3. The enemies: the fighter charges straight (1 hit point, 100 points), the weaver zigzags in a sine wave (2 hit points, 150 points), the slow armoured tank fires back (6 hit points, 300 points), the drone arrives in a cluster of five (1 hit point, 80 points each). Indestructible metal grafts scroll past as well: you steer around them.
4. Each organ has a trap that is always announced before it hurts: in the throat, contractions squeeze the walls (up to 190 pixels, with a 1.9-second warning); in the lungs, a gust pushes you to one side without hurting you; in the stomach, drops of acid fall from the ceiling then leave puddles; in the heart, scrolling arteries swell suddenly with the heartbeat.
5. Four weapons are picked up in capsules, each on three levels: the spread shot (a fan of 3, 5 then 7 shots), the piercing laser (1, 2 then 3 lines going through 3, 4 then 5 enemies), the homing missiles (1, 2 then 4 missiles) and the shockwave (goes through everything, taller at each level, and wipes out enemy shots at level 3). Picking up the same weapon raises its level; a different weapon replaces it while keeping your level minus one (never below 1). When you carry a weapon, its capsules drop much more often than the other three.
6. Capsules come from carrier enemies: at least one group in eight has one. They also give a shield (it absorbs one hit), a support drone (two at most), a bomb (three at most) or, once the first organ is cleared, an extra life (five at most). A capsule that no longer changes anything still scores 100 points.
7. When you are hit, you lose your shield, your drones and one weapon level all at once, one per hit, never two. Your weapon is never lost: at level 1 it stays at level 1. Whatever took the hit (the shield or the weapon level) spares you a life; with no shield and a level-1 weapon (or no weapon), you lose a life. Your weapon carries over from one organ to the next, after a boss, after a defeated creature and even after losing a life. You start with 3 lives and 1 bomb; a hit leaves you 1.5 seconds of invulnerability.
8. The bomb (B key, BOMB button on touch) wipes every enemy shot, deals 7 damage to every enemy on screen and 26 to the boss, and makes you invulnerable for 1.2 seconds. The beam charges in about 7 seconds; it never goes off on its own: the gauge stays ready until you release it with a single press.
9. The Force module, a pod attached to your fighter, goes in front of or behind you: on its side it absorbs enemy shots and fires in support. It does not block obstacles or bosses.
10. Anti-camping: if you stay more than 5 seconds inside a 90-pixel radius, the creature spots you (“SPOTTED! MOVE!”) and every enemy except the tanks aims at you, faster and faster. A boss fight that lasts over 40 seconds goes into a frenzy. No hiding place holds: you have to keep moving.
11. Killing the Ventricle defeats the creature: 190,000 points, chain explosions, then a tougher creature opens and you gain a life. Enemies have 30% more hit points per creature, bosses 35%, traps are 20% more intense, enemy fire is more frequent, and all points are multiplied by the creature’s rank, up to rank 6; the difficulty climbs with every creature, faster up to the sixth and more gently after. Bosses also release curtains of shots across the full height of the screen, with a single open corridor: it lights up green a little over a second before, go through it. Five names follow one another: the Leviathan, the Kraken, the Hydra, the Behemoth and the Chimera.

Controls (keyboard and touch)

• Arrow keys or W A S DFly the fighter in four directions
• SpacebarRelease the beam when the gauge is ready
• BDrop a bomb, if you have one left
• Shift or FSwitch the Force module to the front or the back
• Thumb slide anywhere on the screen (outside the buttons)Fly the fighter: it follows your gesture without passing under your finger
• Tap BEAM, FORCE or BOMBRelease the beam, switch the Force or drop a bomb on touch

How a run ends

The run ends when you lose your last life. There is no final ending: defeating the Ventricle moves you on to a tougher creature, and the campaign starts again at the first organ. Your score is the total of points: enemies, capsules, bosses, organ bonuses (1,000, 2,000, 3,000 then 4,000) and 190,000 points for every creature defeated, all multiplied by the creature’s rank.

Tips & strategy

Did you know?

The horizontally scrolling shoot ’em up took hold in arcades in the mid-1980s. That is where the charged shot appeared: hold the button to build energy, then release a ray able to skewer several enemies at once, an idea Néon Starship’s beam picks up.

The genre also popularised “organic” levels, where you cross the inside of a creature: fleshy walls, pulsing enemies, bosses that are organs. Néon Starship builds its whole campaign on it, with four organs and one boss per organ.