Your ship fires on its own as soon as an enemy is on screen. You control movement and abilities — and in Orbit, if you like, the aiming direction too.
Keyboard & mouse
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Move | WASD or arrow keys — or the mouse: the ship follows the pointer |
| Aim (Orbit) | Mouse, as soon as you fly with WASD or the arrow keys |
| Focus | Hold Shift · a short tap or F locks it · hold the right mouse button |
| Jump | C |
| Nova | Space or X · middle mouse button |
| Reprise | V |
| Next contract (Orbit) | N |
| Skill tree | Tab — inside, 1 and 2 switch between the skill tree and ship tabs |
| Pause | Esc |
| Sound on/off | M |
When choosing a boon, keys 1–3 take a card and 4 or Esc declines. At a station, 1–4 buy and Esc undocks.
Controller
| Action | Button |
|---|---|
| Move | Left stick or D-pad |
| Aim (Orbit) | Right stick |
| Focus | Hold LT · LB locks and unlocks it |
| Jump | X |
| Nova | B or RB |
| Reprise | A |
| Next contract (Orbit) | Y |
| Skill tree | Start |
| Pause | Select / View |
In every menu, the D-pad or stick selects, A confirms and B goes back. Every window remembers where you were last. When a controller connects, a short “Controller verbunden” (controller connected) message appears at the bottom — if it doesn’t, click into the window once and press a button on the controller.
In solo play, the controller switches off the mouse: as soon as you use it, the mouse is out of the game and the pointer disappears over the playfield — until you actually move the mouse. A resting pointer no longer steers your nose, and an accidental right-click doesn’t toggle focus. This doesn’t apply in co-op, where mouse and controller belong to different players.
Aiming in Orbit (twin-stick)
In Orbit your ship fires wherever its nose is pointing.
- Controller: the right stick sets where the nose points while the left stick flies independently. Let go of the right stick and the nose follows your direction of travel again.
- Keyboard + mouse: if you fly with WASD or the arrow keys, you aim with the mouse — for the rest of the run. The mouse only counts once it has actually moved during the run.
- Mouse only: if you fly with the mouse alone, nothing changes for you — the ship turns toward its direction of travel.
- If you don’t aim yourself for 3 seconds, the auto-aim takes over. It starts out slow and imprecise and gets better at the stations — more under Orbit.
While aiming, the nose turns twice as fast as while flying. Arcade has no aiming cone.
Touch
On a phone, put your left thumb anywhere on the left half — a stick appears there, and how far you push sets direction and speed. The right thumb gets round buttons for jump, nova, reprise and focus; held on an empty spot on the right, it also means focus. SKILL only appears when you have a point to spend.
On a tablet, the ship follows your finger. The pause menu lets you switch between stick and “finger follows”. Aiming with a second stick isn’t available on phones yet.
Shield and hull
Your ship has two buffers: the shield, which recharges after a short pause, and the hull, which only heals through repair drops, level-ups and skills.
The shield sits on the ship. A magenta arc surrounds the ship, as long as the shield you have left — a closed circle when full, visibly growing back while it recharges.
- Hits where they land: the bubble lights up exactly where the hit came from, with sparks at that spot. The overshield glows white-gold — it builds up to +50 % if you go without being hit for a while.
- Shield down: when the shield breaks, the bubble visibly shatters. After that a red dashed ring flickers around the ship, and a grey arc shows how long until the shield starts recharging. Hits then strike the hull in orange-red, and the ship flashes red.
Two kinds of hits — the color tells you which:
| Kind | How to spot it | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | Magenta, violet, cyan | eats through the shield faster, but does less to the hull |
| Kinetic | Amber, plus missiles, ramming and meteors | 40 % goes through the shield onto the hull — the hull bar then blinks amber |
Basics
- The hitbox is small. Only the bright core in the middle of the ship counts. Projectiles passing beside it don’t hit.
- Focus makes you slow and precise — and every weapon switches into its own, harder-hitting mode. More under Focus.
- Grazes: brushing past projectiles charges combo and flow, which multiply your score.
- Jump makes you invulnerable for a moment and works from the start, with a 2.6 s cooldown. Points in the Phase Jump skill shorten it to 2.3, 1.9 and 1.5 s. Which jump you use is chosen before take-off. In the HUD it sits below the nova, with a bar for the cooldown.
- Nova erases all projectiles, hits every enemy and refills your shield. You find novas as capsules out in space; after each nova, 30 seconds pass before the next one is ready.
- Ion chamber & reprise: the chamber collects resonance — from grazes and from every hit your shield absorbs. V fires it all back as a volley.
- Range: every weapon has its own range, and mechanical projectiles lose power over distance.
Settings
In the footer of the main menu:
- Glow (Leuchten): full, subtle or off. “Off” disables the effect entirely and gains frame rate on weaker devices.
- Effects (Effekte): full, normal or sparse — how many sparks, embers, smoke and debris the game shows. Default is full on computers and normal on touch devices.
- Anonymous flight data for balancing can be switched off with a checkbox.