DOS terminal graphics — Pseudo-3D tunnel rendered with Unicode block elements, box-drawing characters, and 256-color ANSI palette. No graphical window required.
Browser preview — Open index.html in any browser to play the same game rendered as a canvas-based terminal emulator. No build step, no server, no dependencies.
Cross-platform — Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Any terminal that supports 256 colors and Unicode.
Neon warp tunnel — Fly through a perspective-scrolling tunnel with pulsing neon walls, animated ring stripes, and a parallax starfield.
Ship controls — Steer, boost, and fire a pulse cannon.
Obstacles and mines — Dodge rotating obstacle blocks and blinking mines that deal shield damage on contact.
Energy orbs — Collect glowing orbs to gain score and restore shield.
Progressive difficulty — Speed gradually increases with distance. Obstacle density grows every minute. Mines begin spawning after the first minute and escalate over time.
Warp transitions — Every minute the run steps up a difficulty level, and the step announces itself: the tunnel walls shift from blue and cyan to magenta and white, the speed lines down both margins double up, and a >> WARP LEVEL 2 << banner blinks on the HUD for two seconds.
Powerup drops — About a third of the mines you shoot down leave a pickup behind, and it drifts toward the ship as it comes in. A green + restores 25 shield, a cyan ! gives ten seconds of rapid fire, and a magenta ~ halves the world's speed for five. The two timed ones count themselves down in the footer.
HUD — Live score, distance traveled, shield percentage, shield bar, and a speed readout showing the current multiple of the starting speed.
High score persistence — The browser version saves your best score and restores it on load. A [ NEW BEST ] banner flashes the moment a run passes it.
Pause — Press P to halt a run and show a [ PAUSED ] overlay. The world freezes with it, so once an in-flight flash or shake has finished, the pulsing overlay label is all that still moves. Useful in the browser, where there is no terminal interrupt.
Screen shake — Taking damage jolts the view for a fraction of a second. The browser build offsets the whole canvas; the terminal build jolts only the play area, leaving the HUD and border anchored.
Barrel roll — Q and E roll the ship for half a second. The wings turn through the roll and the hull goes white, and nothing can touch the ship while it does. A cooldown keeps it an escape rather than a way of life.
Combo scoring — Kills strung together inside two seconds chain: the second is worth double, the third triple, and a COMBO x3 counter reads the multiplier back on the HUD. The chain tops out at COMBO x8. Two quiet seconds drop it.
Retro sound — The browser version synthesizes every tone on the spot with the Web Audio API. No audio files, nothing to load: a pulse cannon zap, an orb chime, a damage crunch, a mine explosion, and an engine hum that pitches up with the boost. Most browsers want the page touched once before they will make any noise, so sound usually starts on the first keypress; a browser that permits it outright plays from the first frame.
CRT overlay — The browser version lays scanlines and a soft vignette over the canvas. On out of the box, toggled with C, and the choice is remembered across reloads.
Touch controls — The browser version grows a thumbstick and a pair of buttons the first time it is actually touched, so a phone can fly a run and a laptop with a touchscreen is left alone. The FIRE button doubles as Enter on the menus, which is the only key a phone otherwise has no way to press.
Light mode — The browser version follows the system colour scheme. Dark is the game's natural state and stays the default; a system set to light gets the same tunnel re-inked in dark blues and teals on pale paper, and it switches under a run in progress without touching it.
Debug mode — Five test scenarios accessible via CLI flag or URL parameter for isolated gameplay testing.