Video Game / Steredenn

Dodge this.

Steredenn is a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter developed by Pixelnest Studio, and published by Plug In Digital on Oct 1, 2015. It can be found on Steam, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Switch.

Your Mothership has just been attacked by Space Pirates - in the middle of the tutorial, no less! Take your Space Fighter and go teach those jerks a lesson.

Each level in Steredenn is comprised of a sequence of randomized attack waves, requiring you to think fast and adapt quickly as the game throws different challenges at you; one minute you might be negotiating a laser corridor, the next, you might be being bombarded by missile frigates. To add to the chaos, stages may also have random modifiers, such as meteor showers or an off-screen laser cannon trying to zap you.

If you make it through all of that, you'll then have to hope your ship is in good enough shape to face the boss. Defeating the boss restores your armor and leaves you fresh and ready to face the next stage, and additionally, you get to select a perk for your ship. The first time you defeat a boss unlocks it in the "Arena" mode, which allows you to re-fight that boss at your leisure, using any loadout of weapons you have already found in a normal run.

At the beginning of the game, your ship is equipped with just a Boring, but Practical rapid-fire blaster weapon, but you'll quickly get the opportunity to replace it. Weapons come in a wide variety of categories: bullet weapons, energy beams, autonomous drones, and even some melee weapons. Choosing a good weapon combination forms part of the game strategy; the ship can only hold two weapons at a time, which forces the player to make quick decisions as to which weapon to discard or keep when a replacement becomes available. Every weapon has merits and drawbacks, and each kind of enemy reacts differently to each one (indicated by the color they flash when you hit them).

There is also a "Daily Run" mode which allows you to compete for the highest score of the day with other players of the game, with the caveat that you only get one attempt at any given Daily Run.

In 2018, Pixelnest Studio released an enhanced version called Binary Stars, which added a huge amount of new content, including new playable ships with special abilities, new weapons, new and improved bosses, and more.

---

• Abnormal Ammo: The Ninjabot weapon, which fires a rapid stream of shurikens.
• After Boss Recovery: Your armor is magically restored if you defeat a boss.
• Always Accurate Attack: Homing Missiles, naturally. They never miss, which makes it easier for you to concentrate on dodging, but they do less damage than other weapons.
• Apocalypse How: Class 1. The first loop of the game reveals a devastated homeworld.
• Area of Effect: The Specialist projects a circular aura around itself, which protects bots inside the aura's radius.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Some of the weapons have shield-breaking effects, allowing you to take down otherwise indestructible enemy forcefields.
• Asteroids Monster: The Alien Threat boss behaves like one of these, splitting apart multiple times before you can finally kill it for good. Just when you think you've blasted it to pieces... the pieces reactivate and start attacking you again!
• Asteroid Thicket: The game is full of floating rocks, many of which are booby-trapped or have turrets and guns mounted on them. Energy weapons are particularly effective at dealing with them.
  • There is a level event which greatly increases the density of asteroids, making this trope even more apparent.
  • The "Set The Universe On Fire" artefact massively increases the number of rocks and adds flaming meteors to the mix too.
• Attack Drone: The Autocannon and the Raygun upgrades are both little drones that hover next to your ship and automatically fire when appropriate.
• Attack Reflector:
  • The Reflector is a shield-type pickup which gives your ship a reflective barrier that can be oriented in any direction. Enemy projectiles that hit it can be reflected away, or even back at the enemies that fired them. The barrier can only be maintained for a short time, however, and then has to recharge.
  • Unfortunately, the bad guys have their own version of this: one of the later enemies is a ship that can put up a forcefield in front of itself, which reflects your shots back at you in the form of enemy projectiles. The more power you hit it with, the bigger the reflected projectile.
• Battle Boomerang: The Boomerang weapon is just that; a large energy boomerang that flies straight forward, then returns, slicing through enemies as it goes.
• BFS: The Sword weapon definitely qualifies on the "Big" aspect, seeing as it's a sword that can slice through fighter craft, cleave asteroids, and stab battleships to death...
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The default Blaster weapon is a straightforward rapid-fire bullet weapon with a slight spread, and absolutely fine for most situations. In particular, the Blaster always seems to be effective against bosses, which otherwise tend to have an annoying resistance to special weapons. The game itself notes that it is possible to beat it using nothing but the Blaster (and there's an achievement for doing so).
  • The Laser is also fairly unexciting - just a straight continuous beam - but it's a solid, dependable weapon in many situations. Few enemies are resistant to it, it cuts through lines of fighters easily, and unless the beam is interrupted, you can usually just keep it trained on an enemy to deal continuous damage until they're dead. It also deals with asteroids effectively.
  • Homing missiles are simple and reliable; you can't miss with them, so you can just find a safe spot and keep pumping them out until your target is destroyed.
• Boss Rush: A new weekly competitive mode added in Binary Stars. You have to defeat every boss in the game in rapid succession, as quickly as possible.
• Boss Subtitles: Presented in a rather tongue-in-cheek way; they seem to be randomly selected, and are often nonsensical. They never provide any useful information about the boss itself.
• Boss Warning Siren: In classic shoot 'em up fashion, everything slows down, the screen narrows, a siren blares, and Boss Subtitles introduce the approaching boss.
• Bullet Hell: The Mothership boss's attacks are reminiscent of danmaku shooters, as it fills the screen with dense patterns of slow-moving projectiles. That's the Final Boss, however; overall, Steredenn isn't a bullet hell game.
• Bullfight Boss:
  • The Superchabal, a large vessel with incredibly powerful engines that makes several attack runs at you.
  • The Frigate MK-2 boss also does this.
• Chainsaw Good: The Saw weapon causes your ship to sprout a huge circular sawblade that deals constant damage to enemies on contact.
• Charged Attack:
  • The appropriately-named Charger is a charge weapon in the classic shoot 'em up style, complete with a Sucking-In Lines effect. It fires a flaming bolt that explodes on contact into smaller bolts, the number depending on how much the weapon was charged up.
  • The Shockwave weapon also requires you to charge up and release, producing a circular burst of energy that can vaporize projectiles and small fighters, and damage larger enemies.
  • The Mines weapon appears to use some kind of catapulting launcher; the longer you charge for, the further the launched mine will go.
• Choice of Two Weapons: You can only hold two weapons at a time and switch between them at will. The game encourages you to choose your weapon combinations carefully.
• Close-Range Combatant: You can, if you like, eschew the shooting part entirely and simply beat the enemies to death with melee weapons.
  • The Tempest is built for this; it has an auxiliary slot which accepts only melee weapons, so you will always have a backup melee option in addition to whatever other weapons you have.
• Clown Car: The Carrier boss, and later the carrier enemies, can launch far more fighters than it seems like they should be able to hold.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Enemies flash yellow (reduced damage), red (normal damage) or purple (extra damage) when struck by your weapons.
  • Each type of weapon pickup is a different color, giving you some indication as to what it is before you get near enough to identify it. Bullet and energy projectiles tend to match their pickup color (yellow and blue respectively).
  • The color schemes of the first four playable ships all match the pickup color of the weapon that they specialize in.
• Competitive Balance: Binary Stars allows the player access to 5 playable ships. Each comes with different stats and playstyles
  • Jackof All Stats: The Tempest is balanced in every way. Its one feature is a dedicated slot for melee weapons on top of its two guns.
  • Stone Wall: The Fortress has reduced speed and firepower in exchange for taking reduced damage. The power of its Macross Missile Massacre ability edges it into Mighty Glacier territory.
  • Fragile Speedster: The Fury has less HP but more speed and deals extra damage, which tips it into Glass Cannon status. It also has a teleport to maintain good positioning and deal damage when reappearing.
  • Mechanically Unusual Fighter: The Specialist is a The Turret Master that can only use Bots as weapons. It has an aura around itself that can render Bots close to it invincible. It also has Booster Bots that greatly increase their effectiveness at the cost of longevity.
  • Masterof All: The Red Baron has a powerful Spread Shot, Wave-Motion Gun, and Grenade Launcher. Its ability lets it move at incredible speed. However, it has even less HP than the Fury, so it also qualifies as a Glass Cannon.
• Couch Gag: The opening stage of the game is always introduced with a random, sometimes tongue-in-cheek subtitle. Boss introductions are similar.
• Crippling Overspecialization: This can happen if you haven't chosen your weapons carefully enough. Generally, you need to find a balance between offensive power (to take down big threats) and good coverage (to take out small fighters).
• Cutting the Knot: Enemy waves will sometimes use blocking tactics, by putting shielded ships in the way, or laying Space Mines to obstruct you; however, if you have a penetrating weapon, you can pierce straight through the blockage to destroy whatever it's protecting.
• Damage Is Fire: A damaged boss will show visible signs of damage, mostly flames coming off at certain points. This is purely cosmetic however; the actual damage is represented visually with icons. The player's ship also starts flaming and smoking when it's low on armor.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: All bosses are these. While they do have multiple attacks they can switch to as they take more damage, mostly they are just relying on their high health to outlast you.
• Death from Above:
  • The "Laser rain" level event means that lasers are being fired upon you from some offscreen source; presumably a Pirate ship. The player's mothership was destroyed by a similar laser weapon at the start of the game.
  • Similarly, the "Meteor shower" event rains flaming rocks upon the level.
• Death or Glory Attack: The Death Ray is one of the most powerful weapons in the game - nothing can block it, and it can one-hit kill many enemies instantly (except bosses, but it still deals them a massive amount of damage). The drawback? You have to wait a few seconds for it to recharge before you can fire again, and your ship is slowed to a crawl while it's recharging.
• Death Ray: One of the weapons. It's a pink bolt that hits instantly and can kill most enemies in one hit, but leaves your ship dangerously slow while it's recharging.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Everything explodes. Everything.
• Defeat Means Playable: To obtain the Red Baron, you first have to fight and defeat it.
• Degraded Boss: In later levels, you'll encounter mini-versions of bosses you previously defeated.
• Deployable Cover:
  • The player can obtain Shieldbots; autonomous drones which simply project a ship-sized forcefield where they are deployed, to block incoming fire.
  • Less obviously, all Bot weapons can be used as cover in a pinch. Even though they can only block a few shots at most, that can sometimes make the difference between life and death.
• Destructible Projectiles: All projectiles are technically destructible, but you need a weapon that's capable of cancelling them. A more straight example is the propelled missiles fired by some enemies, which can be shot down (although their tiny cross-section makes this difficult).
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Boomerang is one of the more difficult weapons to use in combat; it's a thrown weapon that comes back, and if you fail to catch it you have to wait a few moments for your ship to generate a new one to throw. Catching it is easier said than done when you're dodging a barrage of enemy fire at the same time. But the killer advantage of the Boomerang is the fact that you can use it simultaneously with your other weapon (because you can throw the Boomerang, switch to your other weapon, blast away, then catch the Boomerang), effectively allowing your ship to Dual Wield. And the Boomerang does great damage in its own right.
  • The Reflector (an orientable barrier that reflects enemy fire) can be tough to use in battle, but if you master it, you can give enemies a nasty dose of their own medicine.
  • The Lag Cannon does a great deal of damage, but its operation is unusual; you have to wait a few moments after you hit something for the damage to actually be dealt.
  • In the original Steredenn, the tip of the Lightsaber could cancel enemy projectiles. If you can strike an enemy accurately with the tip, you can both damage it and prevent it from firing on you at the same time, but it takes some precision, and leaves you vulnerable to an almost unavoidable attack if you get it wrong.
• Difficulty by Acceleration: Each successive loop of the game increases the speed of enemy projectiles.
• Doomed Hometown: Well, more like Doomed Mothership: the destruction of the US Goliath, where the player character is stationed, is what sets the game in motion. If you manage to loop the game, you'll find that the destruction has apparently gone much further than your mothership; the entire planet is now devastated.
• Drone Deployer: The Specialist is specifically designed for this purpose and can't use any other kind of weapon. Other ships can deploy drones too if you pick up a Bot weapon.
• Dual Boss: the Alien Threat boss becomes one of these when you destroy it the first time; it splits into two halves, which continue to attack you separately.
• Emergency Weapon: The Tempest, Fortress, and Fury all have special abilities that can deal damage if main weapons aren't available for any reason:
  • The Tempest starts with the Razorblade, a short melee weapon that does good damage at very close range.
  • The Fortress can unleash a Macross Missile Massacre, good for dealing with fighter swarms.
  • The Fury's special ability is teleportation, which is not directly offensive; however, the burst of energy produced by a teleportation can be used offensively to damage and destroy enemies at the destination.
• Energy Ball: The Plasma Gun fires these rapidly; they deal high damage, but the weapon overheats if you fire it continuously for too long.
• Expressive Health Bar: Boss ships don't have a conventional life meter - instead, after they've taken certain amounts of damage, an abstract emoticon flashes up, indicating their distress. The icons become increasingly severe and frequent the closer the boss is to death.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Your ship uses an FTL drive to travel between stages. Some ships and bosses also appear to make use of a jump drive to teleport across the screen.
• Fireballs: The Charger weapon shoots out a ball of fire that splits into smaller fireballs when it hits something.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Flamethrower, naturally, and also Flamebots, the Attack Drone version. They set enemies on fire which deals continuous damage until the fire goes out.
• Flash Step:
  • The Fury's special ability is the power to "blink", which lets it instantly teleport to another location on screen.
  • The Cruiser MK-2 can teleport a short distance to remove itself from the line of fire before assaulting you again.
• Flunky Boss: The Carrier is the only boss that makes no attempt to directly attack you; instead, it prefers to launch fighters to do the fighting for it. While you're dealing with those, it'll also deploy Space Mines, fill the screen with projectiles to obstruct you, blast out shockwaves to stop you getting close, and drop the occasional laser ship too. If you actually can deal with all those things, the Carrier itself goes down fairly easily.
• Fragile Speedster: The playable Fury ship is agile, powerful, and can teleport short distances instantaneously; however, it starts with less armor than the other ships.
• Gatling Good: The Hypergun takes a moment to spin up and slows your ship to a crawl while it's firing, but the barrage of bullets devastates anything in the line of fire.
• Glass Cannon: The tiny enemy fighter craft can be cut down in droves with ease... but if they do get a chance to fire, their shots deal a surprising amount of damage, so these enemies can't be ignored for long.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: The Chain Reaction upgrade causes enemies to emit a burst of damaging energy upon death, which is bad news for large groups of small fighters.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Battleship's final attack is an enormous spew of projectiles focused entirely on your ship, and is typically the most dangerous part of the boss battle... unless you have the Reflector, in which case you've just been handed the most powerful attack in the game.
• Homing Projectile: The player can get hold of Homing Missiles, and one of the Destroyer bosses also has these.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: In one attack wave, the mini-frigate enemy suddenly hyperjumps in out of nowhere and attacks immediately, which can take you completely by surprise if you're nearby.
• Invincible Minor Minion: One common enemy is a distinctive fighter that has no weapons and is no direct threat, but exists solely to project a forcefield around itself, which renders it indestructible and will block pretty much anything you fire at it. These enemies tend to position themselves in such a way as to provide cover for something more nasty. There's a few ways to deal with them; the surest way is to destroy them before they can get the shield up. Failing that, you either need to have a weapon capable of destroying enemy shields, or one with a piercing quality, such as the Impaler. (The shielded ship will survive, but anything behind it will be skewered).
• Jack of All Stats: The Tempest; originally the sole ship in the game, but became the starter ship in Binary Stars. It specifically has no drawbacks, but doesn't specialize in anything either.
• Laser Blade: The Lightsaber weapon. In the original Steredenn, this was a short-range beam that could be used to damage something in close quarters, but also had the useful quality of being able to cancel projectiles, making it a nice Utility Weapon. In Binary Stars, it was changed to function more like a literal Star Wars lightsaber, becoming swingable and now able to deflect projectiles instead.
• Laser Hallway: You'll often encounter arrays of laser emitters and conduits, which turn the screen into a confusing laser deathtrap. Sometimes you'll need to think carefully about which conduit to destroy to open up a safe path. Destroying the emitter is the best option, as this will drop the entire grid.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Reflector is pretty close to being a regular shield in terms of its size and shape (albeit one made of energy that fits onto a spacefighter).
• Macross Missile Massacre:
  • The Fortress has one for its special ability.
  • The Bomber MK-1 boss has one of these for its third attack; a projectile that splits into dozens of difficult-to-dodge bolts.
• Medium Awareness: One of the random Boss Subtitles is "See you next loop!", implying that the boss is aware that it'll probably be fighting you again if you manage to complete and loop the game.
• Mercy Invincibility: When the player takes a hit on their armor, a forcefield briefly activates to protect them from damage for a few moments. This is especially useful since the impact of being hit can be quite disorienting.
• Minimalist Run: There's an achievement for completing the game using only the starting weapon.
• Monster Is a Mommy: Implied with the Asteroworm, a giant version of the tentacled rocks sometimes encountered during levels.
• More Dakka:
  • The Cruiser boss uses this as its defensive strategy; it hurls enough firepower at you that you'll spend more time trying to survive the onslaught than attacking it.
  • The Battleship doesn't even bother with defensive tactics; it sits there and just pelts you with barrage after barrage of fire, hoping to kill you before you can wear down its armor (and it's not exactly lacking in that department, either).
  • The bullet weapons escalate in fire rate and dispersion. The starting Blaster is fairly direct, with a narrow spread; the Hyperblaster loses accuracy as you fire; and the Supergun fires a huge Spread Shot that covers most of the screen.
• Multi-Directional Barrage:
  • The Demuxer fires bullets in all directions, covering pretty much the entire screen.
  • Most bosses also have multi-directional attacks, which are annoying for any player using a Bot strategy.
• Multistage Teleport: The Fury can use its Blink ability up to 3 times in rapid succession, allowing it to tele-hop across the screen.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • The Crusher (fires two slow but hefty bullets which deal high damage, smash shields, and knock back enemies).
  • The Death Ray, which is a ray that instantly kills most enemies in one hit.
  • The Impaler (a semi-automatic weapon that fires short bursts of penetrating bullets).
• One-Hit Polykill: You can achieve this with the Death Ray, which cannot be blocked and deals enough damage that it'll kill most enemies in one shot.
• Optional Boss: The game has a few special non-standard bosses that only show up if you fulfil certain conditions. Destroying them gives you access to powerful artefacts.
• Overheating: The Plasma Gun is vulnerable to this, to compensate for its high damage. As long as you're careful with it, you're fine, but if you push it too hard, it'll shut down for a few seconds until it's cooled down.
• Pinball Scoring: The multiplier mechanic means that good players can achieve ridiculously high scores. In the Daily Run, you can often tell who looped the game and who didn't, because those who did will have scores that are orders of magnitudes larger.
• Planar Shockwave: Boss explosions include a short-lived ring of fire.
• Post-Final Boss: After you defeat the Mothership (the last boss listed by the game), there is an immediate second boss fight with an unknown ship that has some unusual attacks. Fortunately, it's much easier than the Mothership, and can usually be dispatched without trouble. Defeating it completes the game.
• Power at a Price: If you defeat one of the special bosses, you're presented with a choice of several epic-level powers, such as being granted a massive damage bonus or the game's most powerful weapon; however, every choice comes with an equally weighty trade-off, such as halving your armor, or making all enemies explode into bullets on death. Fortunately, the game does allow you to reject all the choices if you're not ready to make such a sacrifice.
• Recoiled Acrossthe Room: The sheer power of the Hyper Shotgun will toss your ship in a random direction every time you fire. It will likely send you into a bullet during later game bosses.
• Recursive Ammo: Most of the boss attacks involve projectiles that split into more projectiles.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: You don't start off with a shield, but you can obtain one as a perk. Although it can only withstand a single hit, it recharges when you're not firing.
• Retractable Weapon: All of the Contact weapons (ie. melee weapons) are these; they're attached to your ship, but they visibly shrink or retract when not in use.
• Retraux: The game's graphics are presented in pixellated retro style, but makes use of a wide color palette, transparency, shaders, and various other modern innovations.
• Retro Upgrade: Some weapons, although initially deficient, become formidable with the right upgrades. Contact weapons, for example, are the only ones which can get the massive "+50% Damage" upgrade. The "Weapons Reload Faster" upgrade is also great for making slow, heavy weapons more destructive.
• Scenery Porn: The backgrounds are full of gorgeous space phenomena rendered in a retro style.
• Score Multiplier: There's an ever-present multiplier which increases every time you survive a wave without damage, and also if you complete the wave objective (usually "destroy all enemies"). There's also a "+20% score" multiplier upgrade which is guaranteed to appear at the end of every level, which means that you can opt to go entirely for score-increasing upgrades if you desire.
• Sci-Fi Name Buzzwords: Several of the weapons are named as a combination of prefix-plus-weapon-name: eg. "Hyperblaster", "Megagun", "Ultralaser".
• Sentry Gun: Most of the Bot weapons are these; floating turrets that lock onto and shoot down approaching enemies.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: A later enemy comes with a built-in shield generator that lets it project a forcefield in front of itself, rendering it indestructible unless you have a weapon or upgrade that lets you break enemy shields. Even worse, if you fire on it, your shots get reflected back at you, so even attacking through it with a piercing weapon is a risky move.
• Shock and Awe: The Ancient Power (Mysterious Alien Technology) upgrade causes your ship to passively electrocute nearby enemies.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Averted by the actual Shotgun weapon. It has a respectably tight spread and infinite range. The Hyper Shotgun has a bit more spread, but is balanced out by the sheer size of the bullets
  • Enforced by the Lightgun, whose shots dissipate after traveling about half screen
• Shout-Out:
  • The game has quite a few shout-outs to Gloryhammer (one of the devs seems to be a fan):
    • The Gloryhammer weapon itself, obviously.
    • One of the special upgrades is "Set The Universe On Fire", which causes a permanent meteor shower and massively increases the number of floating rocks.
    • One of the Boss Subtitles is "Hail to Hoots!", a reference to the Gloryhammer song "The Hollywood Hootsman".
  • The TARDIS sometimes appears in the background.
  • Other Boss Subtitle shoutouts include:
    • "Infinitely improbable"
    • "Warning! A Huge Battleship is approaching Fast!"
    • Two to David Bowie, both from "Space Oddity": "Commencing countdown, engines on", and "Floating in a most peculiar way". Bowie died a few months after the game's release.
• Slow Laser: All laser beams obey the Rule of Cool rather than any kind of physical laws; they're fast, but technically dodgeable.
• Space Marine: Your character appears to be one (he's stationed on a military carrier and trained in ship combat).
• Space Mines:
  • The Minefield stage condition means that you'll be facing a grid of space mines on that stage. If you run into them, they unleash some kind of energy which slows your ship down.
  • One of the enemies lays stationary projectiles on the screen to obstruct the player's ship, as does the Carrier boss.
  • The Mines weapon allows the player to lay mines, too (which have the additional bonus of being able to cancel projectiles).
• Space Pirates: The antagonists of the game. They even use a skull motif on their ships.
• Space Sailing: Most enemy ships have chunky, utilitarian designs, but the Cruiser boss (and later, its regular enemy counterpart) very much resembles a seafaring vessel, with gun turrets on the top and a keeled hull on the bottom.
• Spectacular Spinning: When you choose a perk pickup after defeating a boss, it forms into a ring which spins faster and faster around your ship until it's absorbed in a flash of energy. There's no clear reason for this. It just looks really cool.
• Spread Shot: The bullet weapons all have different kinds of spread. The Megagun is perhaps the most traditional spread weapon, a fixed three-way spread of bullets.
• Standard Human Spaceship: The larger spaceships tend to be chunky assemblages that favor function over aesthetics.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: Most of the vessels encountered fall into distinct classes, particularly the bosses, which use standard military classifications like "Bomber", "Frigate", "Destroyer", and so forth.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The game is full of it, naturally, and explosions tend to rock the screen too. In fact, the game actually begins with a massive explosion, as it's the destruction of your mothership that kicks off the action.
• Sucking-In Lines:
  • The Destroyer bosses do this before firing their Wave Motion Guns. Unlike the drawn-out, theatrical build-up of many shooters, the charge-up period of these massive weapons is startlingly brief, and can easily catch an unwary player by surprise.
  • The smaller laser ships also do this before firing their lasers.
  • And your own ship does this while it's charging the Charger or the Death Ray.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Every kind of enemy reacts differently to different weapons. The tiny fighters are easily cut down by bullet weapons, while asteroids are more easily destroyed by energy weapons. You can tell if an enemy is weak or resistant to your weapon by looking at the color they flash when the weapon hits. This is one reason why weapon selection is important; often, you'll be better off switching to another weapon if your current one isn't doing the job.
• Tele-Frag: The signature move of the Fury, which can teleport directly into enemies to deal them damage or destroy them.
• This Is a Drill: The Driller weapon, an enormous conical drill. Also, Drillerbots, the Attack Drone version.
• Transforming Vehicle: The player's ship subtly changes shape depending on what weapon it's using.
• Turns Red: The Cruiser boss suddenly changes its behaviour after you deal enough damage to it, and starts firing out weaving projectiles in all directions.
• The Turret Master: The Specialist, one of the playable ships. Designed to maximize the effectiveness of bot weapons, it projects a constant aura around itself to protect any bots that are within its radius, and comes loaded with special "Boosterbots", which temporarily supercharge other nearby bots at the cost of reducing their lifespan.
• Utility Weapon: Some weapons have the ability to cancel projectiles, which can be a lifesaver in some boss battles.
• Victory Fakeout:
  • Defeating the Mothership does not complete the game; as soon as the Mothership is destroyed, a mystery boss immediately shows up and you go straight into another boss battle. Fortunately, this boss is much easier than the Mothership.
  • When you destroy the Alien Threat the first time, it splits into two halves... which then continue attacking you.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • This is the premiere armament of the Destroyer bosses, a gigantic red beam that lasts for several seconds. In terms of damage per shot, it's the most powerful weapon in the whole game.
  • In the final levels, some of the larger enemies have this weapon too!
  • The Red Baron (when fought as a boss) also has this.
  • Unusually, the player themself can acquire a Wave Motion Gun too! There are a couple of weapons that fit the bill:
    • The Ultralaser is the most typical example; it takes a second to charge up, and slows down your ship while active, but it is unblockable, and will tear through shields and annihilate anything caught within the huge beam.
    • The Ultrabeam is similar, but builds up power the longer you hold it for. It is immensely powerful, but slows your ship to a crawl at full charge, making it very difficult to dodge incoming projectiles.
    • The Red Baron retains its Wave Motion Gun even after it becomes a playable ship.
• Wave-Motion Tuning Fork: The Destroyer bosses and the laser ships both split open their hulls before firing their beam weapons.
• Weak Turret Gun: The Bot weapons that your ship can place are easily destroyed by enemy fire. You can get an upgrade which makes them more durable.
• Weaponized Teleportation: The Fury's teleportation ability produces an energy burst at the point where it rematerializes; you can use this to damage and destroy enemies.
• Where It All Began: If you complete the game, you return back to where the initial pirate attack took place. The wreck of the US Goliath can be seen drifting in the background.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…:
  • If the player has chosen their weapons poorly (or, perhaps, intentionally), it's possible for them to be in a situation where their only useful weapons are impractically destructive; for example, they might find themselves having to use the Death Ray to take out a tiny fighter, because that's all they have.
  • This is taken to its literal conclusion if you use the "Supermassive Glorious Survivor" artefact to acquire the Gloryhammer, as it then becomes your sole weapon for the rest of the game; you literally only have a hammer!
• Wolfpack Boss: The Alien Threat boss splits into increasingly smaller pieces as you destroy it, becoming one of these.