Skysalvo

What is Skysalvo?

Skysalvo is a free, original vertical-scrolling arcade shooter you play right in the browser. You fly a lone fighter up an endless dusk sky while raider waves pour down from the top of the screen. The trigger is automatic — the skill is in the flying: weaving between hostile fire, holding the line under a boss barrage, and swooping through the debris to vacuum up alloy. What makes it different from a pure high-score chase is the hangar: the alloy you bank persists between runs and buys upgrades that make the next sortie stronger. Even a run that ends on wave 2 pays for something.

How to play

• Fly — drag a finger (or the mouse) anywhere on the sky and the fighter mirrors the motion; your hand never has to cover the ship. On keyboards it's arrows or WASD, diagonals included.
• The autocannon fires by itself, straight up. Put raiders in the lane and they die; what you dodge is their fire.
• Contact and hostile orbs cost one hull point each, with a short grace window after every hit. Lose them all and the sortie ends — but the alloy still banks.
• Waves get denser and faster. Every 5th wave a dreadnought blocks the sky: a long duel against rings and fans of fire, with a shard bonanza when it falls.

Know your raiders

• Darts fall straight down — fodder, but they add up.
• Weavers slalom across the lanes — lead them, don't chase.
• Divers pause high, lock your column, then lunge. Sidestep late.
• Gunners hold a line and shoot aimed orbs. They soak four hits and always drop alloy — sometimes a repair or an aegis shield.
• Dreadnoughts strafe the top of the sky, alternating aimed fans with full rings of fire. The hp bar at the top is your progress.

The hangar — the twist

Wrecks burst into ⬡ alloy shards that drift down the sky. Fly near and your magnet reels them in; every shard you catch is banked to the hangar even if you're shot down seconds later. Between sorties the hangar sells four permanent upgrade tracks: a faster cannon, a widerspread, a stronger magnet, and extrahull. That loop — fly, bank, upgrade, fly deeper — is the whole game. There's no way to buy alloy and nothing to unlock with money; the only currency is flying.

The goal — how to score and “win”

• Splash raiders — kills and wave-clear bonuses are the score.
• Catch the alloy — every shard is +5 now and an upgrade later.
• Down the dreadnoughts — each one is worth hundreds and rains shards.

Your best score, deepest wave, alloy bank and hangar levels are saved on this device — the real win condition is watching wave 10 become routine on a loadout that used to die on wave 4.

Tips

• Buy the magnet first — alloy compounds; everything else follows from a fatter bank.
• Divers lock your position at the start of their lunge. A small, late dodge beats a big, early one.
• During a dreadnought ring, the gaps between orbs are widest close to the boss — sometimes forward is the dodge.
• An aegis shield is 6 seconds of immortality. Spend it greedily: park in the lane and let the cannon feast.
• Repairs at full hull convert to +100 — grabbing one is never wasted.