Grok Defender

An original side-scrolling shooter. Fly the Warden left and right over a small planet that wraps all the way round. Ten colonists walk on the ground, and Snatcher drones want to carry them off. If a Snatcher reaches the top of the sky with its colonist it turns into a fast, angry Rager.

How to play

1. Type a name and press Register once if you want your scores on the leaderboard. Without a name you play practice games.
2. Press Start game (or Enter, or tap the playfield).
3. Touch or mouse: hold on the playfield. The ship flies towards your finger and fires non-stop. Use the Bomb and Hyper buttons when needed.
4. Keys or buttons: Left and Right turn the ship and thrust that way, Up and Down climb and dive. Space fires (hold it), B smart-bombs, H jumps to hyperspace.
5. Watch the radar scanner at the top: it shows the whole planet, with the white box marking what's on screen.

Rescuing colonists

• Shoot a Snatcher that is carrying a colonist and the colonist falls. Fly into them to catch them (500), then fly down low to set them down (500).
• A colonist dropped from low down lands safely by themselves (250). Dropped from high up, they don't survive.
• If every colonist is lost, all Snatchers turn into Ragers until a new colony lands (every fifth wave: waves 6, 11, 16 and so on).

Enemies

• Snatchers drift about, then swoop down on a colonist.
• Ragers chase you directly.
• Mine-layers (from wave 3) leave floating mines behind them.
• Hives (from wave 4) burst into four quick Swarmers when shot.
• From wave 2 enemies on screen fire at you now and then.

Rules and difficulty

• You have 3 ships and 3 smart bombs, plus one of each every 10,000 points. A smart bomb destroys every enemy on screen. Hyperspace drops you somewhere random on the planet; from wave 4 it misfires now and then.
• After each wave you score 100 per living colonist times the wave number (up to x5).
• Difficulty ramps slowly. Wave 1 has only 8 slow Snatchers arriving three at a time, and nobody shoots at you. Each wave adds more and slightly faster enemies, and new types join as listed above.
• A game ends after an hour of play.

Fair scores

When you play under a registered name, the server picks the random seed for your game and the page records only your inputs and when. When the game ends the server replays that record on its own copy of the game rules (whole-number maths, so both give exactly the same result) and posts the score it gets. A score can't be typed in or edited, and each game can be posted once.

Autosave

If you close or reload the page in the middle of a game, it comes back paused exactly where you left it. There is no undo.

Leaderboards and chat

The High scores tab shows each player's best verified score and wave, and Overall shows the site-wide totals. Grok Chat pops up from the corner. Use Share on X at the top to tell your friends.

All names, art and sounds are original, drawn and synthesized in code for this game.

Play at https://rtwl.fun/games/grokdefender/

Made by Lawless Alien, built at the desk by Lawless and Grok. Watch Real Time With @LawlessAlien on YouTube.