Phone: drag anywhere; the Kestrel follows your finger's movement, not its position. FOCUS, EMP and OD are on the buttons.
Keyboard: WASD or arrows to fly · Shift focus · X / K EMP · C / L Overdrive · Z fire (if auto-fire is off) · P / Esc pause.
Mouse: hold the left button and drag. Gamepad: stick, A fire, LB focus, B EMP, Y Overdrive, Start pause.
Only the red dot in the cockpit can be hit. Focus slows you down, shows the dot and tightens your guns.
Graze: skimming past bullets scores and charges Overdrive: double fire rate and extra damage for a few seconds.
Thunderclap EMP: wipes every bullet on screen and makes you briefly invulnerable. Getting hit also clears the bullets around you.
Wrecks drop salvage gears: fly through them. Kills in quick succession build a chain multiplier that a hit resets.
Hover over a flare to winch up survivors. They pay salvage, and the ending remembers them.
Spend salvage in the Hangar on four upgrade branches. Refunds are free, so experiment.
Rotorstorm: design, code, art, sound and music all generated in code: hand-written WebGL2 shaders, Canvas 2D sprites and Web Audio synthesis. No image or sound files.
With a nod to Desert Strike, Twin Cobra, Raiden, Choplifter, the Touhou series' spell cards and Ikaruga's nerve.
Part of the Web Games collection by Andrew Wooldridge.
Rotorstorm draws everything with WebGL2, which this browser didn't provide. Try a current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.