Star Sweep: clearing formations and dodging dives

Star Sweep is a formation shooter on a neon relay grid. Rows of glitch drones march across a violet sky, and your small relay ship has to clear them before they overload the network. The ship fires by itself, so your only job is movement: arrow keys on a keyboard, or drag with a finger on a touch screen. You can play it in your browser.

How the campaign is built

There are 32 relay stages on the Stages map. Each stage is a run of several waves with different drone layouts, and you move on only when every drone in a wave is gone. Finishing a stage earns stars, and stars open the next node on the map. Early stages are slow and roomy; later ones stack more rows, march faster and send more dives.

Reading a formation

• Drones fly in with a short entrance, then settle into their paths. Use those first seconds to pick a side.
• Stay under gaps in the formation and away from the densest columns.
• Sweep sideways across the rows instead of parking in one spot. The bolts do the work while you keep moving.

Dives

From the later tiers on, single drones break off the formation, swoop at your ship and loop back to their slot. Watch the return path as well as the drop, and don't wait in the spot where a diver loops back into the formation.

Pickups and shields

Weapon pickups fall during a stage and only last for that run. You start every stage with a single shot; grab Dual Relay, Prism Spread or Rapid Pulse when they drop. Crystal shield shards stop incoming fire for a while and crack as they soak up hits, so save them for the waves where dives and bullets pile up. Rare data ghosts are bonus targets worth extra score; take them only when they don't pull you under a dense row.

Small things worth knowing

Set a nickname in Settings and your best clears show up on the leaderboard on that device. Sound and music each have their own switch there too. More on the Star Sweep page, or start a run now.