Coreguard
Fly a defence drone around the last power core and hold back the swarm. Crawlers grind straight at the core, darters weave, splitters break in two and brutes soak up everything you have; every fifth wave sends a Breaker that keeps spawning while it lives. Your gun fires itself at whatever is closest, so the game is about where you are, not where you point. Survive a wave and you refit the drone — rapid coils, a split barrel, piercing rounds, thrusters or an emergency weld — and the pulse blast is there for the moment the floor fills up.
How to play Coreguard
⌨️ Keyboard & mouse
- WASD/arrows
- fly
- Space
- pulse blast
- 1 2 3
- pick an upgrade
- Free, no sign-up
- Plays in the browser
- 📱 Tilt steering
How Coreguard works
You fly a small drone around one power core in a circular arena. Everything that spawns outside the rim walks straight at that core, and anything that reaches it takes a bite out of its integrity — 100 to start with, and the run ends at zero. Your drone shoots on its own at whatever is nearest and in range, so the whole game is about where you put yourself: between the core and the swarm, and moving.
Four kinds of attacker turn up, and a fifth on every fifth wave. Crawlers are slow and endless; darters weave, which makes them awkward to hit but easy to kill; splitters break into two crawlers when they die, so clear them out with room to spare; brutes are slow and thick and hit the core hardest. The Breaker is the boss: it keeps spawning crawlers while it lives, and takes a whole wave's worth of damage to bring down.
Clear a wave and you refit: three upgrades are offered and you keep one — fire rate, damage, an extra projectile, longer range, thrusters, piercing rounds, plating, a faster pulse, or an emergency weld that repairs the core. Three of them change how a run plays rather than how hard it hits: an escort drone that circles you and fires on its own, arc coupling that makes every hit jump to a second enemy, and an overcharged pulse that reaches further and welds the core as it goes off. Below 45 integrity the weld is always one of the three.
From wave 7 some of the swarm turns up plated: the first two bullets strike the plate off instead of hurting them, so a crowd of plated crawlers eats your damage. The pulse tears a plate away rather than pinging off it, which is what it is for. Kills drop energy motes that charge the pulse, and it charges slowly by itself. Kills in quick succession build a streak that multiplies what each one is worth, up to double. Your best wave and score are kept in this browser.
Tips for Coreguard
- Fly between the swarm and the core, not around the outside. Anything that gets past you is integrity you do not get back.
- The gun picks the nearest target, so you aim by moving. Sweep along the arc a wave is coming from instead of sitting still.
- Darters are fast but thin — let them come to you. Brutes are the ones to start shooting early, while they are still out near the rim.
- Save the pulse for when the floor fills up or a Breaker gets close; it knocks everything back as well as hurting it.
- Fire rate and damage both go further with a split barrel than without it, but a split barrel alone hits softer — pick one line and build it.
- Plated enemies arrive from wave 7 and shrug off two bullets each. Arc coupling and the pulse go through a plated crowd much better than raw damage does.
- Kills close together build a score streak worth up to double, so clear a cluster in one sweep instead of picking off stragglers.
