"People are saying they've one-hundred percented this game in minutes... I can't score! What am I doing wrong?"

Is this you? It was me too. And then I found a formula which worked.

THIS STILL TAKES PRACTICE. Like anything in life, there is not a magic shortcut to get what you want. Wanna lose weight? Eat less; excercise more. Wanna gain muscle? Work out until you hurt. Eat eggs and chicken. Wanna reach 100,000 points and uninstall this little time waster? practice, and use my guidance.

As the game point-blank refuses to take screenshots, alt-tab or do anything which makes gathering visuals efficient, I have spent some time with good old PrtSc and MS Paint to bring you the following cheat-sheet! Click for the full resolution.

So, as long as I'm providing scoring help (Look over there, to the right! You can skip straight to that if it's all you need!) I thought I may as well throw in the other achievements for good measure. Let's take a look at them:




You need to score 5,000 points in one game. The only way to score is by shooting enemies.

You need to score 10,000 points in one game.

You need to score 30,000 points in one game.

You need to score 50,000 points in one game.

Start playing! As soon as you get in-game for the first time, this achievement will unlock.

After selecting your ship, you'll be asked if you want to play in 'Dark Mode'. Select yes and begin. You can then quit straight out.

You need to score 100,000 points in one game. Wowzers! But that's why you're here, right?

Your first choice having hit 'ENTER' is to select your ship. I've had several runs with each ship, and I can say uniqeuivocally the second ship is the one to go for. Yes, the other ships make it easier to get out of danger, due to their superior speed, and this can feel snail like in comparison. However the dual shot of this ship not only obliterates your opponents, but gives you a much better chance to keep your multiplier alive and hit that final achievement.

Really. Choose this ship. You'll get used to the slow speed, and it's firepower is the easiest way to hit that 100,000 point target.
It may seem obvious, but make sure that Dark Mode is OFF. There are no extra points for playing in this mode, it just makes it claustrophobic and more difficult.


The playing field is closed on all sides by a pink barrier. You can hit this barrier, it won't hurt you, but neither your ship nor your bullets can travel beyond it. You'll probably notice the tiny pink ships flying straight at you from all sides, and the even smaller pink bullets firing right at you. You can see them before they cross the barrier into the playing field, and when they do they'll begin to shoot at you. This is where you'll learn one of the most important last-minute life savers for every game:

You can shoot everything, even the bullets of enemy ships.

This shouldn't be your focus, though: they aren't worth any points, and they don't increase your mulitplier...

As you slowly dither around the playing area, you'll notice a few other things. When you get shot for the first time, you won't die: You have several hit points at the top of the screen, and as different enemies shoot you, these will deplete. Thankfully, replenishment pick-ups spawn periodically at random points around the map. If you've lost even one heart, try and pick these up! They can be your key to survival!

The other major pickup to note is the large, white ball - this gives you a shield, which lasts forever until you either get shot, or make contact with an enemy ship, and absorbs 100% damage from that one impact.

Ramming ships, whether by accident or design, is not the way to go. You'll lose a lot more hit points, and in most cases simply explode on impact, losing an entire life and all your multiplier progress. This is not good.

Take another look at my cheat-sheet up above if you get confused - the game is very simple, ridiculously so, but it explains nothing.

So, you blow up your first enemy ship, and get a whopping 5 points. So how do we turn that into 100k? Well...

Every time you destroy a ship or an enemy missile (NOT standard enemy bullets), you'll not only gase a small base amount of points, you'll also increase your score multiplier by ONE.

You need to destroy another ship within FOUR SECONDS to increase this to TWO, then THREE, FOUR, FIVE and so-on.

This is absolutely the key to a hi-score; I cannot stress this enough. If you take longer than four seconds to destroy another ship, or you lose a life, your multiplier will reset to ZERO and you'll be struggling back in the single and double figure point values again.

As time goes on and your score increases, you'll notice other enemy types enter the fray. The first of these, which is larger and purple (stop s♥♥♥♥♥♥ing), fires the same gun as your ship: A twin laser. Again, these shots can be destroyed but again, they aren't worth any points and won't keep your multiplier going - the ship itself is worth more base points than the pink starting one though, so clear them out! A little further on, you'll find another new ship type which has a very annoying movement pattern: They zig-zag up and down along a sine wave style pattern. Get rid of these ASAP, because if one hits you it's an immediate full life loss, and your scoring opportunity crippled. Again, they're worth a lot more points than the previous ships.

As you play, you'll also notice smaller enemies drifting across the screen - mainly tiny little purple asterisk-style things. Avoid these as they will seriously damage you, but as they drift about you CAN destroy them and they WILL keep your multiplier going!

It sounds ridiculous, but remember this: When you destroy something which will keep your multiplier going, it makes a little 'poof' noise. This doesn't happen when shooting enemy bullets for example, but it DOES when destroying every ship, the asterisk-things AND enemy missiles. Any time you hear that effect, you're golden.

• Keep moving. If you sit still, you die. If you die, you lose the multiplier. If you lose the multiplier, you won't score highly. So keep moving.
  
• Don't go out of your way to use the charge-shot. Seriously, it's not worth it. The few seconds it takes to charge leaves your ship not firing anything, and the spread of the shot is rarely more effective than just letting your ship continue to shoot autonomously.
  
• In order, my pick-up preference is: Heart, Shield, Rapid Fire, Spread, Bounce, Missile. The missile spawns so rarely, and fires so slowly, it's not worth taking any kind of risk for. If you have full hit points, you can discount going for the hearts - they do not stack beyond the five you start with. The bounce shot fires relatively slowly, but it will ricochet off the pink barriers of the playing field until it hits something.
  
• If you're starting to get surrounded, don't forget to use SPACE to get a small boost of speed. It's only for a second or so, but it can be enough to get you out of a bullet-hell situation, or grab a shield to give you a fighting chance.
  
• When a pickup begins to flash, you have very little time until it disappears, at which point you won't be able to collect it. If one starts flashing and you're not already going for it, let it go and concentrate on staying alive. If you ARE going for it, use your speed boost to get to it before it vanishes!
  
• My favourite tactic when there are a lot of enemies on the screen is to move a little more slowly, and then boost away when they gather closer. Shoot in the opposite direction to which you're moving, and destroy them in one satisfying swoop, boosting your multiplier and score considerably.
  
• Finally, when doing all of the above, don't forget: Make sure you kill everything within four seconds of the previous kill, and avoid certain death by shooting enemy bullets out of the air. Even if you do lose your multiplier, it's betting than losing a life, especially at the end-game when you can quickly get it back up to 20-30 in no time.
  
• If you can get your multiplier over a hundred, you'll be running up that leaderboard in no time!

Thank you for reading, keep playing, keep trying, and above all: Have fun!

~M~