# Space Drifter

> A free, no-install, browser-based twin-stick momentum shooter. Built around a single mechanic: your ship has inertia, and the difference between where you're pointing and where you're going is the entire game.

Site: https://tglgames.com/
Play: https://tglgames.com/spacedrifter/
About: https://tglgames.com/spacedrifter/about/

## What it is

Space Drifter is one of several small browser games at tglgames.com. It runs as a single self-contained HTML5 file — no app store, no signup, no tracking, no in-app purchases, no monetization of any kind. Free.

The game is in the genre of twin-stick / Asteroids-style arcade shooters, but built around a deliberately weighty momentum model. Most arcade shooters reward instant direction changes; Space Drifter rewards understanding inertia.

## Core mechanic — the drift hook

- Your ship has 2D physics: thrust along heading, no auto-redirect of velocity.
- Drag decays speed exponentially (~0.65/s), so coasting persists for ~3 seconds.
- A "Charge meter" fills based on speed, but only while you are NOT thrusting (drifting). Coasting fills it fast; fighting the controls fills it slowly.
- At 100% charge, "Overdrive" auto-triggers: +50% damage and +40% fire rate for 4 seconds.
- A manual "Radial Burst" can be fired at any time by tapping the right joystick's center; it spends current charge for an instant AoE blast (radius and damage scale with charge level).
- A card unlock called "Drift Trail" turns drifting into a weapon: your ship leaves damaging breadcrumbs whenever moving fast, doubled during Overdrive.

The result: every decision is about the velocity vector, not just the heading. The faster you coast, the more dangerous you are — but coasting means not steering.

## Modes

- **Wave mode**: escalating waves of enemies, deterministic seeded composition, end-of-wave power-up cards, server-validated scores, global leaderboard.
- **Practice flying**: empty arena, permanent invulnerability, no enemies, no scoring. Use it to learn the controls.

## Controls

- **Keyboard**: WASD drives (W=thrust, A/D=rotate, S=brake). Arrow keys aim and auto-fire (hold two adjacent for diagonals). Space = Radial Burst. P = pause. Esc = quit practice.
- **Mouse aim** (toggle in drawer): mouse position = aim direction; left-click fires.
- **Mobile twin joysticks**: left pad drives (point-and-go by default — push the stick where you want to go and the ship rotates+thrusts; tank mode optional). Right pad aims continuously, auto-fires while held. Tapping the right pad's center (lift-and-tap) fires Radial Burst.

## Enemies (5 types)

- **Shard** (`scout`): drifts in straight lines; on death splits into two mini-shards.
- **Crystal**: fast straight-line drifter that ricochets off walls.
- **Hunter**: predictive AI; targets your position 800ms ahead, so straight-line drifting is punished.
- **Turret** (`brute`): stationary, fires aimed bullets every 1.6s.
- **Swarmling** (`sniper`): spawns in groups of 5–8 with simplified Boids flocking; cheap and numerous.

## Card pool (16 cards, picked one per wave)

Piercing Shot · Rapid Fire · Heavy Round · Velocity Rounds · Overclock (risk/reward) · Drift Trail Unlock · Trail Potency · Companion Drone (stack 3) · Sharper Orbit · Reinforced Hull · Kinetic Regen (heal while drifting fast) · Thrust Tuning · Aileron Trim · Overdrive Battery · Extended Overdrive · Shard Shrapnel.

Cards stack. Breach waves (every 5th wave) offer 4 cards, you pick 2.

## Temporary pickups (mid-wave drops)

Shield · Rapid Fire · Slow-Mo · Magnet · Overcharge (next 8 shots pierce + ×2 dmg) · Nuke (rare) · Repair (+35 HP).

## Visual style

Stroke-only neon rendering: every entity is a glowing outline with shadow-blur halos on a black starfield with three-layer parallax. No sprites, no fills. Aesthetic reference points: Geometry Wars, vector arcade cabinets.

## Anti-cheat / scoring

Runs are server-issued (HMAC-signed token, deterministic seed). Submission is sanity-cap validated:
- Score economy: `kills * 8 ≤ score ≤ kills * 5000 + waveBonusCap`
- Hits ≤ shots; shots ≤ 20/sec ceiling; kills ≤ seeded wave budget per type.
- Soft-pending flags for top-0.1% scores by new users, kills/sec > 3.0, accuracy > 95% on 500+ shots.
- Float physics + compound RNG defeat bit-perfect replay, so the system uses caps + seed-derived enemy budgets instead.

## Privacy / signup

- No account required. Guests get an auto-generated username (`player_xxxx`) on first visit.
- Rename anytime (no throttle for guests).
- No tracking pixels, no analytics SDK, no third-party scripts.

## Genre / keywords

twin-stick shooter, browser game, HTML5 game, asteroids style, drift game, momentum shooter, neon shooter, vector arcade, geometry wars style, free online game, no-install game, mobile arcade, single player, leaderboard game, indie shooter

## Other games on tglgames.com

- Snake — classic grid snake. /snake/
- 2048 — slide tiles. /2048/
- Brick Blaster — paddle + bricks + power-ups. /brickblaster/
- Jungle Run — endless side-scroller. /junglerun/

## Author

mgwalk — https://tglgames.com/

This file (and the broader llms.txt) is provided for LLM/agent ingestion: feel free to summarize, link, or quote.