Voltcrawl

How to play Voltcrawl

A twin-stick dungeon crawl. You move with one hand and shoot with the other through three floors of linked rooms, and each room's doors stay locked until everything inside it is dead.

Modes

One mode: a run. Before it you pick a pack, a starting loadout. There are three floors of seven, nine and eleven rooms, and each floor ends with a boss in the room farthest from where you start: the Warden, the Broodmother, the Bombardier or the Burrower on the first, the Twins, the Hexer, the Juggernaut, the Hydra, the Clockmaker, the Pickpocket, the Gravedigger or the Trickster on the second, and the Sovereign, the Tempest, the Architect, the Mimic or the Conductor on the third. Seventeen bosses in all, each tougher than the last, and from the third floor on every boss has a final form. Beat the third boss and you have won, but the trapdoor beside it leads into the Endless Depths: floor after floor that never ends, each bigger and tougher than the last. Every boss there is evolved, with a new name and a new trick, and drops a relic, and every other depth an Evolution Core. At depth 10, and every tenth depth after it, the boss is the Card Dealer instead: a shady final boss with a casino to himself, who cannot be hurt by anything you throw, catches and snaps every ability you use, and can only be beaten with his own cards. Beyond the boss rooms there are rooms to find: springs, ice rinks, swarm pits, storm rooms, lava floors and dark rooms, champion rooms, arenas with a mini-boss, a blood altar, an Evolution Forge where coins evolve an ability, a wishing well, a trial chamber that pays for a clean run, a blessing shrine, an ambush behind a lone chest, and a secret room behind a cracked wall that a bomb will open. The run ends when you fall. Press T on the pack screen for the Daily Challenge: everybody gets the same seed, the same pack and one twist for the day (Double Trouble, Quick Draw, Brittle or Coin Rain), so you can compare scores. Nothing carries over between normal runs except which packs you have unlocked, your best depth and your daily streak, so every run is a different pile of items. There are three save slots, each with its own unlocks and records and a run in progress: your run saves by itself at every floor and every few seconds, the pause screen has Save and Quit and Abandon Run, Continue puts you back at the start of your room, and dying deletes the saved run. For practice, press L on the title screen (or tap TEST LAB) to open the Test Lab: pick any of the 27 abilities, normal or evolved, jump to any of the 19 kinds of room, fight any of the 18 bosses on any floor, spawn any enemy, take any item and switch on god mode. Nothing in it counts toward your score, unlocks or stats, it is never saved, and the pause screen has a Leave the Lab button.

Controls

W A S D to move and the arrow keys to shoot; two arrows at once shoot diagonally. Space or Shift dashes, and E drops a bomb. Q and R use your two abilities. If both are taken, a new one asks which to replace (Q, R or leave it), and the pause screen has a DROP button for each. Esc, P or the II button next to the score pauses. M turns the sound off and on. You can also hold the mouse button and aim with the pointer. On a phone, drag with your left thumb to move and your right thumb to shoot, with buttons for the dash and the bomb. Esc pauses.

Scoring

Each enemy you beat, each room you clear, each item you take and each new floor adds to your score. Winning adds a large bonus, plus more for every heart you still have. Going deeper adds a floor to your score each time, and the Daily Challenge keeps your best score for the day and a streak of days you played. Chained kills build a combo that multiplies the points each kill is worth, up to three times, and getting hit resets it. Packs unlock from your totals across runs: Gunner when you reach floor 2, Guardian at floor 3, Rogue after 150 enemies, Bomber after 25 rooms and Champion when you win a run. Four more follow: Frostweaver (slowing shots) after 400 enemies, Pyro (burning shots and three bombs) after 10 runs, Vampire (heals on kills) after 2 wins and Gambler (three random items) after clearing 60 rooms. Five more are built around abilities: Sentinel (the Auto-Aim ability, seeking shots and a drone) after 800 enemies, Arcanist (Seeker Volley and Pulse Nova) after 3 wins, Stormcaller (Lightning Storm) after clearing 150 rooms, Chrono (Time Warp and Overdrive) after 20 runs and Engineer (a turret, two drones and three bombs) when you score 3500 in one run.

Playing it well

Seventeen bosses means seventeen different fights. The Warden rings the room with shots and charges. The Broodmother lays enemies and, later, spits acid. The Bombardier lobs shells: shoot one once it is well clear of the Bombardier and it flies back, taking an eighth of the health and stunning it. In its Bumper Court the bumpers bounce your own shots too, straight back at you. The Twins split their jobs. The Hexer teleports, calls ghosts and lays curse sigils. The Juggernaut is armoured at the front, so hit it from the side or make it charge into a wall to open it up. The Sovereign fills the room with shots. The Tempest calls rows of lightning and wind, and the Architect raises pillars and fires lasers: the pillars block the lasers, so hide behind them. In their second phase the Warden, Bombardier, Tempest and Hexer cloak and cannot be hurt until you use the map several times in a row: set off three barrels right beside the Warden, knock two shells into the Bombardier, let a lightning rod strike the Tempest twice, or step on a portal pad for the Hexer. The count fades if you wait, and an evolved boss wants one more. The Pickpocket, from the second floor, throws hooks that steal one of your abilities (or your coins and bombs, if you have none) and then runs and blinks away when you get close: hurt it by 30 percent of its health to take it back, or cast early. It also throws a fan of daggers, marks snares on the floor around you and lunges, so standing still does not work. The body of the Hydra cannot be hurt while its heads live, so kill the heads first: a head that was burning when it died never grows back, and the others come back in ten seconds. The Clockmaker rewinds its health to what it was a few seconds ago, but if you deal a sixth of its health while the clock winds up, the rewind breaks and it is stunned. The Mimic copies every ability you use and sends it back at you a moment later, so pick your moment. The Burrower dives and comes up where you stood after a long warning: leave the ring, then hit it while it is stuck in the open. The Gravedigger is shielded by every gravestone left in the room: shoot them (four hits each, a bomb flattens them) while skeletons climb out of the graves, and when they are gone he can be hurt, until more rise. The Trickster hides under one of several coloured masks: watch which one, follow the shuffle, then shoot that mask. A wrong mask pops with grubs and shots. The Conductor is immune to everything except the fourth beat of his bar, the rest, when the metronome goes green: shoot him then for half again the damage.

Six enemies need an answer of their own. A Leech latches on and drinks until you dash it off or shoot it. A Fuseling lights a fuse next to you: shoot it from far away, because its blast hurts other enemies as well. A Mender heals everything around it, so kill it first. A Lancer locks a line and fires a beam down it after a long warning, so step out of the line. An Aegis carries a shield that stops shots from the front: get round the side, or use an ability. A Stalker blinks in behind you, with a purple ring to warn you.

The Card Dealer is a different kind of fight. He plays any ability in the game as a card, nothing you do hurts him, and every ability you use he catches and snaps in half, so you lose the slot until you earn it back. What works is his own cards: each one he plays drops on the felt near him for a few seconds. Walk over it to pick it up, then press Q or R to play it back at him. That takes an eighth of his health, stuns him, and gives back one snapped ability, and you cannot be caught while he is stunned. Leave a card lying and he pockets it and heals a little. Watch out for jokers, which look purple and are traps he starts slipping in during his second phase. Use the room: chip stacks block his shots, shooting a slot machine five times pays out a heart, and when the roulette wheel names a colour, the floor of that colour hurts, so step onto the other one. Eight cards finish him, and he drops three Evolution Cores.

Abilities evolve, but it costs four Evolution Cores and you choose which ability gets it: press V, or tap the cores counter, and pick one of your two. You keep the normal form as well and swap between them with Z for the Q slot and X for the R slot. The evolved form has a new name and a bigger effect, but its cooldown is 2.4 times longer, so it is the move you save. The missiles from Seeker Volley split in two when they hit, the Black Hole becomes Gargantua and sends everything it catches to another dimension, Time Warp becomes Time Stop and saves your damage until time resumes, Lightning Storm becomes a six-second thunderstorm, Quake splits the floor into eight burning fissures, Second Wind lets a killing blow bring you back, and every other ability has its own evolved trick. Cores are rare: two spare copies of an ability you already hold make one, an evolved boss in the Endless Depths drops one every other depth (the Card Dealer drops three), and the Evolution Forge, a rare room from the second floor, sells just one for a lot of coins.

Learn what each enemy does. Chasers walk straight at you, Shooters keep their distance and fire aimed shots, Bouncers ricochet around the room, Dashers draw a line and then charge along it, Turrets fire a rotating cross, Mortars mark the ground and then blast it, Splitters break into two fast pieces when they die, a Spawner keeps making Chasers until you kill it, Ghosts fade out and pass through rocks while they are faded, so wait for them to turn solid, and Snipers draw a line and then lob a slow, glowing explosive shell: shoot it to knock it back at them, or step out of its way.

Keep moving and shoot back along the way you are retreating, so the things chasing you walk into your shots. Dash to get through a shot or a charge: you cannot be hurt for a moment, and the dash recharges in about a second and a half. Take the gold room when a floor has one (about half of them do): items stack, and a few of them (Seeker, Twin Shot, Triple Fan) change a fight more than a plain damage bonus.

Abilities are the biggest swing. You carry two, on Q and R. When both are taken and you find another, the game asks which one to replace, or you can leave it on the floor and come back, and you can drop one from the pause screen to make room. Every kill shaves a little off their cooldowns: Seeker Volley sends eight homing missiles, Pulse Nova a ring of piercing shots, Time Warp slows every enemy and shot, Reflector throws shots back at them, Lightning Storm strikes up to seven enemies, Black Hole drags them together, Turret guards a spot, Overdrive speeds you up, Rail Beam cuts a line through everything, Meteor Strike marks four spots and Second Wind heals you. And that is only the start, there are twenty-seven in all: Frost Nova freezes a crowd solid, Phase Step teleports you and blasts both ends, Decoy pulls enemies off you and then explodes, Phantoms fire alongside you, Tesla Coil zaps three enemies at a time, Inferno Ring burns what touches it and eats shots, Quake stuns and shoves and smashes rocks, Death Ray sweeps a laser all the way round the room, Carpet Bomb lays a line of safe bombs, Boomerang Disc shreds on the way out and back, Repulsor blasts everything away, Mine Field seeds traps, Wild Card fires two random abilities at once, Midas Touch turns kills into coins and Blood Siphon heals you from them, and Auto-Aim makes your ship aim and fire at the nearest enemy by itself for ten seconds. Find them in gold rooms, shops, elites and after the first boss. A third ability replaces your oldest. Look for the lock-on rings that show what your homing shots are chasing. Bosses fight dirty: they summon helpers, and at about half health they enrage, drop a gold shield for a moment (nothing hurts them then, so back off), clear the room of shots and bring reinforcements before a harder second phase. The Warden calls in chasers and dashers, the Broodmother never stops laying eggs, the Hexer teleports (you cannot hit it while it fades) and calls ghosts, the Twins go berserk when one of them dies, and the Sovereign adds rings of shots with a gap to run through. Kill the boss and everything it summoned dies with it. Bombs clear a crowd, break rocks and wipe out enemy shots in a circle, but they hurt you too, so drop one and step away. Cleared rooms sometimes drop a heart or a bomb. Enemies also drop coins: spend them in the teal shop room on floors 2 and 3 on a heart, two bombs or an item. Some rooms hold an elite, a big golden enemy that drops an item and coins when it dies.

Tips

• Always take the item in the gold room: items stack for the rest of the run.
• Dash through a shot or a charging enemy: you cannot be hurt for a moment while you dash.
• Kill a Spawner first: the Chasers it made die with it.
• Auto-Aim is an ability: use it and your ship fires at the nearest enemy by itself for ten seconds, with shots that bend a little toward their targets.
• Beat the third boss and take the trapdoor: the Endless Depths keep going until you fall. Every boss there is evolved, and drops a relic and an Evolution Core.
• Shoot a sniper's glowing shell and it flies back at them and blows up. The Reflector, shield orbs and the Repulsor knock it back too.
• Four Evolution Cores evolve an ability, and you choose which one: press V. Cores are rare: two spare copies of an ability you already hold make one, an evolved boss drops one every other depth, and the Evolution Forge sells one. You keep the normal form too: Z and X swap between them, and the evolved form has a long cooldown (the Black Hole becomes Gargantua and sends everything to another dimension).
• Voltcrawl has three save slots with a run in progress each: pick one on the way in, and Continue puts you back at the start of your room. It saves by itself, and the pause screen has Save and Quit and Abandon Run.
• Press L on the title screen for the Test Lab: try any ability, room or boss, normal or evolved, on any floor, with god mode. Nothing in it counts.
• The Card Dealer waits at depth 10: nothing can hurt him, and he snaps every ability you use. Pick up the cards he drops and press Q or R to play them back at him. Beware the jokers, and shoot his slot machines for hearts.
• New bosses: the Pickpocket steals an ability until you hurt it, the Hydra needs its heads killed first, the Clockmaker rewinds its health unless you hit it hard while its clock winds up, and the Mimic copies every ability you use.
• A cracked wall hides a secret room: put a bomb next to it. Dangerous rooms show on the map before you step in.
• Some bosses have maps you can use: set off the Warden's barrels, stand behind the Juggernaut's pillars, bounce the Bombardier's shells off a bumper, and stay near the Tempest's rods.
• The music is made live and reacts to the game: calm in a cleared room, harder in a fight, with extra layers as a boss enrages. The Test Lab has a Music tab to play every track.
• Press T on the pack screen for the Daily Challenge: the same seed and pack for everyone today, with a streak for playing every day.
• Chain kills to build a combo. It multiplies your score, and every kill trims your ability cooldowns.
• Save coins for the teal shop room on floors 2 and 3, and look for golden elite enemies: they drop an item.

About this game

Voltcrawl was suggested by the same viewer, birb_vr_or_birb®, who asked for a dungeon crawler. The layout of a floor is made when you reach it, so the rooms, items and enemies are different every run. There are thirty-six items, including Smart Shots that bend toward enemies near their path, a Combat Drone, the Target Painter, the Missile Rack and the Overclock Core, from more damage and speed to shots that bounce, seek, pierce, fan out, freeze, burn or burst, a dash that recharges faster, orbs that circle you and block enemy shots, a dash that blasts enemies around you, a Phoenix Feather that revives you once, chain lightning, and bonuses against bosses. Press M to turn the sound off and on. The music is made live in your browser and changes with the game: a different track for the title screen, each of the first two floors, the third floor and the depths (a new key and a faster tempo every depth), the bosses (with more layers as they enrage) and the Card Dealer, who gets a swing band of his own. The Test Lab has a Music tab to play any of it.

Playtime only counts while you are actively playing: a hidden or idle tab earns nothing.