Vector Warden: Swarm Protocol

You are HEX-01, a neon cyber-sentinel alone in a grid that keeps spawning geometric hostiles. Your weapons fire on their own. You steer, dodge and decide what to build.

Every kill drops XP shards. Fill the bar and pick one of three modules: 7 weapons and 8 passive systems, 15 in total, each with several ranks. Mix them any way you like.

Weapons

• Pulse Repeater: rapid plasma bolts with multi-shot and pierce
• Aegis Orbitals: rotating energy blades
• Arc Tesla Coil: chain lightning across clusters
• Nova Shockwave: an expanding ring that damages and pushes back
• Seeker Swarm: homing micro-rockets with an explosive blast
• Ion Railbeam: a piercing laser lance through whole lines
• Singularity Mines: gravity mines that pull foes in before they detonate

Passives: damage, fire rate, move speed, pickup range, hull regeneration, critical hits, armor and XP yield.

The swarm learns. There are 10 kinds of hostiles: swarmers, shield crawlers, phase dashers that telegraph their lunge, mitosis hexes that split, snipers that shoot back, carriers with a shield aura, volatile novas that explode, leeches, mites and goliath juggernauts. Ring ambushes close in every half minute. At 4:30 the Kronos Warden arrives. At 8:30 the Omega Leviathan comes for you, and taking it down clears the run.

Between runs, spend the Data Cores you collected in the Cyber Hangar: 8 permanent upgrades for hull, damage, speed, cooldowns, pickup range, armor, core yield and repair. Your progress is saved.

Also: a free reroll of the three modules once per run, a 2x speed toggle, screen shake and damage numbers you can switch off, a performance mode, and a fully synthesized soundtrack with sound effects. No downloads, no assets to wait for.

Controls

• Move: WASD or arrow keys
• Level-up choice: 1, 2 or 3 (or click or tap a card)
• Pause: P or Esc
• Sound on/off: M
• Mobile: touch and drag anywhere to move (virtual joystick); tap the cards to choose
• Weapons fire automatically; the game pauses by itself when the window loses focus