Grok Galaxian

An original space shooter. An alien swarm hangs in formation at the top of the sky, swaying side to side. One at a time (and later in groups) they peel off, swoop down at your Starling fighter, shoot and fly back up to their places. Clear the whole formation to finish the wave.

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. Your fighter slides under your finger and fires as fast as it can.
4. Keys or buttons: Left and Right (or A and D) to move, hold Space or Fire to shoot. Only one shot can be on screen at a time, so make it count.

The swarm

• Drones (purple) are the rank and file.
• Lancers (red) escort the flagships.
• Sovereigns (gold flagships) dive with up to two Lancers from wave 2. Shoot the escorts first, then the Sovereign, for up to 300.

Capture beam and twin fighter

• From wave 3 a Sovereign may drop down and project a capture beam. If your fighter is caught in it, it's carried up into the formation and you lose that fighter.
• Shoot that Sovereign while it is diving and your old fighter breaks free and flies down to join you: a twin fighter that fires two shots at once (+1000). Shoot it while it sits in formation and the captured fighter is lost.
• A twin fighter is a bigger target, but a hit only costs one half.

Rules and difficulty

• You have 3 fighters, plus one every 10,000 points. A bullet or a diving alien costs a fighter.
• Difficulty ramps slowly. In wave 1 only one alien dives at a time, slowly, and fires a single shot. Each wave dives more often and faster, with more aliens at once, more shots and sharper steering. Escorts join in wave 2 and the capture beam in wave 3.
• 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/grokgalaxian/

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