About Scrapstorm
Scrapstorm gives you one button and makes you regret every time you press it. Holding the left mouse opens a magnetic field that drags loose scrap out of the arena and into orbit around you; releasing it fires everything you are carrying. That is the entire control scheme, and it is also the entire problem — because the scrap orbiting your hull is simultaneously your ammunition, your score, and the thing twenty-four rival bots are trying to take off you.
A run lasts a little over three minutes and it is not a loop. Eighteen seconds in, the storm starts closing: seven rings, twenty-six seconds apart, each one shrinking the arena and pushing everyone who is left into the same shrinking circle. Levelling up mid-run hands you one of eight attack modifiers — a spiral spread, a chain arc, an orbiting blade, a railgun charge — and because you only ever see a few of them in one run, the ship you finish with is never the ship you started with.
This is the biggest thing on the site by a distance, and the only game here built on a game engine rather than hand-written from scratch. It is one self-contained file: every texture is drawn by code at load time and every sound is synthesised sample by sample, so there is not a single image or audio file to download.
How to play
- Move with the mouse, or with WASD / the arrow keys if you prefer to aim and move separately.
- Hold the left mouse button to open your magnetic field. Loose scrap in range is pulled into orbit around your hull, up to your carrying capacity.
- Release the button to fire everything in orbit along your aim line. Scrap in flight damages whatever it hits — and can be caught again afterwards by anyone, including you.
- Wrecking a rival releases everything it was carrying. Stealing a full load off a late-game bot is the fastest scoring play in the game.
- Kills and pickups fill an XP bar. Each level offers an attack modifier or an upgrade to one you already hold; stacking ranks into one modifier is usually stronger than collecting four.
- From eighteen seconds the storm closes in seven stages. Outside the ring you take continuous damage, so late runs are fought in a very small circle with everyone still alive.
- Three missions are drawn at the start of every run. They pay salvage, which is the currency that unlocks the four alternate cores on the game-over screen.
- On touch, drag to move — your field is open while your finger is down and fires when you lift it.
Five tips that actually move your score
- Do not fly around with a full orbit. Scrap you are carrying is score a bot can take from you, and a full field stops pulling. Fire at something, anything, and start refilling.
- Fight next to wreckage, not away from it. Firing empties you, and an empty hull with no scrap in reach is the most dangerous place in the arena. Pick your fights where the floor is already littered.
- Stack one modifier instead of spreading. Rank III Spiral Shot or Chain Arc changes how a fight resolves; four different rank I modifiers mostly just change the colour of the sparks.
- Chase the combo, not the kill. The multiplier holds for 3.2 seconds and climbs to ×5, so three quick wrecks are worth far more than three careful ones. The scoring is built to punish playing safe.
- Read the storm timer before you commit. A fight you start eight seconds before a ring closes is a fight you finish outside it. Reposition first, then engage — the ring does more damage than most bots.
- Spend salvage on a core that changes your opening, not the dearest one. Lancer starts with Spiral I and hits harder but carries two fewer; Warden is tougher and wider but softer-hitting. They are different hands, not better ones.
