RCWeb Space Shooter
RCWeb Space Shooter is an original shared-screen multiplayer horizontal arcade shooter. Up to eight pilots fly unique ships through one hostile scrolling sector, fight escalating enemy formations, and face the screen-filling Gravemaw Sentinel at the end of the mission.
Starting A Game
Open /space-shooter/ on the shared TV, projector, kiosk, or browser display. The display shows a room QR code. Players scan it to open /space-shooter-c/ on their phones in the same RCWeb room.
The first pilot to join starts the mission. Up to eight pilots can join, including during an active run. Each phone receives its assigned callsign, ship, weapon name, colour, score, remaining ships, and current mission state.
Tap SOUND: TAP TO ARM on the shared display to enable audio. Browsers require a local gesture before Web Audio can start.
Mission Structure
The game currently contains one complete level:
- A 64-second horizontal flight through the Vesper Belt.
- Seven repeating enemy formation patterns that become more frequent as the mission advances.
- Four enemy classes: formation drones, fast scouts, armoured brutes, and rotating mines.
- A boss encounter against the Gravemaw Sentinel after the scrolling sector.
- Victory when the squad destroys the Sentinel, or mission failure if every pilot runs out of ships.
- An automatic mission reset after the victory or failure report.
Boss health scales with the number of active pilots, keeping the encounter suitable for both solo and multiplayer sessions. The Sentinel fires aimed shots and radial bursts, deploys reinforcements, and exposes a luminous core that the squad must focus on.
Controls
The phone controller is intentionally simple. Drag anywhere in the large flight area to move your ship up, down, left, and right. The finger position maps to a safe area of the shared display, while movement smoothing keeps the ship responsive without jumping between updates.
Weapons fire continuously whenever the ship is deployed, so there is no fire button. The controller shows the assigned pilot and weapon, live score, remaining ships, connection state, and mission feedback. Supported devices also vibrate for important events such as ship loss, the boss arrival, and mission completion.
Eight Ships And Automatic Weapons
Pilot slots are assigned in join order. Each slot has a different ship graphic, colour scheme, callsign, and firing behaviour:
- Cyan Lance — Twin Needles: two fast parallel projectiles.
- Nova Rose — Rose Fan: a three-way spread for broad coverage.
- Verdant Arc — Bio Plasma: slower, larger plasma bolts that deal extra damage.
- Sol Spear — Siege Cannons: paired heavy rounds with high impact damage.
- Violet Echo — Phase Waves: two projectiles that weave around one another.
- Azure Comet — Comet Repeater: a very fast stream of light rounds.
- Golden Ray — Solar Lance: a high-speed piercing shot that can pass through several enemies.
- Crimson Aegis — Seeker Rockets: paired rockets that curve toward targets.
Lives, Scoring, And Results
Every pilot begins a mission with three ships. A destroyed ship triggers an explosion and a short redeployment delay; the returning ship is briefly protected. A pilot is out when all three ships are lost, and the mission ends if no squad member has a ship remaining.
Enemy kills award points to the pilot whose projectile destroys the target. Tougher enemies are worth more, every successful hit on the boss adds score, and the pilot who lands the finishing boss shot receives a completion bonus. The shared roster and each phone controller show separate live scores. The victory report names the highest-scoring pilot.
Local Play
The shared display can also provide one local pilot. Click or drag on the game canvas to join and steer, or use the arrow keys or WASD. Local weapons use the same automatic firing system and the local pilot occupies one of the eight squad slots.
Graphics And Animation
The game is rendered with the HTML5 canvas and uses multiple parallax layers to create depth. The scene combines a scrolling nebula, several star depths, planets, moons, asteroid fields, crystal formations, stations, wrecks, and foreground structures.
Transparent sprite sheets provide eight player ships, animated enemy craft, the boss, and the scenery set. Stable per-frame visual anchors and eased cross-fades keep animated ships moving smoothly. Projectiles, engine trails, hit sparks, debris, warp effects, screen shake, and multi-stage explosions are drawn in real time.
Sound
Weapon fire, enemy shots, explosions, boss alarms, engine ambience, victory, and failure cues are generated in the browser with Web Audio. A compact 16-bit-style chiptune score plays during the mission and switches to a faster, darker arrangement for the boss encounter. The game does not download an external music or sound library.
RCWeb Multiplayer Pattern
Space Shooter uses RCWeb's asymmetric viewer/controller pattern. The /space-shooter/ display owns the authoritative simulation, player roster, lives, scores, waves, projectiles, collisions, and boss state. Phone controllers send normalized movement input to that display through RCWeb function calls; the display sends targeted assignment, score, life, vibration, and phase updates back to each phone.
All game code uses vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with no external libraries or remote game assets.