The Gauntlet: Hexwing's single-player roguelike

The Gauntlet is the single-player side of Hexwing, the free browser shooter. It is an endless, constantly scrolling top-down shooter: the world is generated as you fly, enemies stream in, and every sector ends in a huge boss that folds in and out. There are two rogue-like modes, one for each vessel, and they are the only place in the game that drops relics (abilities with specials found nowhere else) and Gauntlet skins, which always glow or shine like metal. Every run starts in a new area, and each run is different. Find it on the Play tab once you are signed in.

Two paths, two vessels

An endless, generated world

There is no arena and no level select. One run is one continuous flight: the ground scrolls under you and is generated a slice at a time above the top of the screen, so no two runs share a map. You pass over buildings with lit windows and turrets on their rooftops, and between them stand walls that stop shots, yours and theirs. Half the ground is given over to stranger things: braziers throwing embers, fountains with jets that rise and fall, bell frames whose bells swing, standing rings with a vortex turning inside them, crystal clusters that pulse, windmills whose sails go round; and on the plane path radar masts that sweep, neon signs that chase, pipelines running with light, gantry cranes swinging a load, plasma vents that puff, and panel arrays that tilt to the sun. A wall that reaches you shoulders you aside and scrapes some health off, so read the ground ahead; a building never does — you fly over it and it costs you nothing. You can fly the whole screen, top to bottom, which is how you get behind a shield or ahead of a slow shot. Enemies are not tied to the ground: they fly their own courses over it, in groups that arrive by distance flown, and hazards such as meteors, spore clouds, solar flares and gravity eddies cross the field on their own.

Bosses that fold in and out

Every sector ends with a boss, and the bosses are huge: a core the size of a fifth of the field with six or more parts arranged around it. A boss cycles between open and closed. Open, its parts swing out, fire at you, and are vulnerable. Then it folds: the parts draw in and the closed mass is armoured, sweeping across the field and throwing spirals of shots. Then it unfolds and the window opens again. Break the parts to reach the core; the boss grows with every sector you clear, so a later Lich Engine or Dreadnought is bigger, tougher and faster than the first.

There are more than two hundred named bosses on each path. A boss is one of twelve houses — the Lich Engine, the Drake, the Bone Choir, the Great Eye, the Hollow Saint and the rest on the wand's path; the Carrier Hive, the Dreadnought, the Void Reactor, the Warp Cathedral and the rest on the plane's — crossed with one of eighteen affixes that change how it fights: a Shrouded boss fades from reach in cycles, a Summoning one calls imps, a Warded one raises a ward you must break first, a Railgun one winds up a rail shot you step out of, a Minelaying one drops mines as it folds, an Undying one grows its arms back. That is 216 bosses a path, each with its own name, look and trick; the banner that announces one tells you what it does, and a run never meets the same house or the same affix two sectors running.

Sectors, difficulty and banking

• Each sector is a new area. When a boss falls you get a calm stretch, then the next sector begins in a different biome, never the same twice in a row.
• It gets faster and harder. The scroll speeds up as you go, and every sector raises enemy health, fire rate, shot speed and damage.
• Bank or push on. In the calm after a boss a Bank run button appears: stop there and keep everything the run has earned. Die, and the run ends where you fell; you keep the score and kills to that point, and a relic or skin that dropped is still yours.
• Your best is kept. Every run is recorded: sectors cleared, distance flown, foes downed and score. The Play tab shows your best on each path and the best runs overall.

Boons: three after every boss

Kill a boss and the calm that follows offers three power-ups, one of each kind, and you keep the one you take for the rest of the run. They stack, they exist only here, and the right run of them is what carries you into the deep sectors. Protection: Bulwark Plating (walls stop scraping you), Aegis Field (the first hit of every sector is stopped dead), Reinforced Hull, Phase Rotor, Field Repair, Vampiric Core, Null Field. Firepower: Hot Rounds, Rapid Coils, Twin Mounts, Piercing Cores, Seeker Chips, Splinter Charge, Weak Point Scan. Progress: Overdrive, Time Dilation, Reserve Cell, Salvage Rig. Eighteen in all, and the three on offer are never ones you already hold.

Rewards found nowhere else

Relics are abilities of ordinary strength whose special is one of four modes that no other ability in Hexwing can roll. The wand's relics carry Summon (two spectral guardians circle you and fire homing bolts at your foes) or Banish (enemy shots near you turn to harmless motes and you are untouchable for a moment; monsters nearby are stunned). The plane's carry Afterburner (five seconds of speed, firing half again as fast, with a burning wake) or EMP (a pulse that wipes enemy shots and freezes your enemy for two and a half seconds). Relics come about one sector in seven and on every boss; you can take them into online PvP.

Gauntlet skins drop about one sector in five and are always glowing, metallic or both. Like every Hexwing skin they are drawn the same way in 2D and 3D and are worn on the Profile tab. Neither relics nor Gauntlet skins ever drop from the practice bot or from PvP.

Tips

• Step sideways, not back. Most enemy fire is aimed where you are; a short sidestep beats a long retreat, and the tilt control lets you shoot around a wall you are hiding beside.
• Kill turrets early. A rooftop turret fires until its building has scrolled off the bottom of the screen.
• Save the special for an open boss. The parts are only vulnerable while the boss is unfolded; a Summon or an Afterburner in that window does more than at any other time. You carry the same two specials as in PvP — one with three uses, one with a single use — and every boss you kill refills both.
• Homing shots home on the nearest enemy, so a homing weapon in one slot clears stragglers while you watch the walls.
• Bank when you are low. A run banked at two sectors with a relic in hand beats a run that ends in the third with nothing new.

2D or 3D

Co-op. Every run can be flown by two: pick Co-op run and be paired with anyone in the world, or open a room and share its code with a friend — or invite a friend straight from the Social tab, which reaches them as a notification if they have those on. Two pilots share one world and one loadout each; a downed pilot spectates until the next boss falls and comes back with half health; the run ends when both are down, or when it is banked in the calm after a boss, and it is recorded for both.

Installed as an app, The Gauntlet plays offline: every file a run needs is kept on the device, and a run flown without a connection is recorded, with its relic and skin rolls, the next time the app is online.

Like the rest of Hexwing, The Gauntlet plays in a crisp 2D top-down view or in 3D from a camera behind your vessel, and you can switch mid-run. The arena pool of the path paints the sky; the ground, buildings, enemies and bosses are drawn from the same specification in both views.