SWARM: play free online

Your weapons fire on their own, so your job is to move, dodge, collect cores and decide how your arsenal grows.

How a run works

Destroyed enemies drop cores. Collect enough of them and you level up, then pick one module out of several offers: a new weapon, an upgrade for one you already carry, or a passive boost such as extra damage or a bigger pickup radius. If none of the offers fits your build, press R to reroll them. Every 7th wave a swarm leader arrives: TITAN, BRUTE or QUEEN, each with its own attack pattern. Beat it and you get a chest and a trade terminal where credits buy repairs and upgrades.

Weapons, operators and evolutions

There are 6 weapon systems: Pulsar with automatic shots, homing Wasp Rockets, the Cutter beam, the Arc Coil that throws lightning across the swarm, Blades that orbit your unit, and the Ring that fires in all directions. Each one goes up to level 5 and then evolves into a final form. You start as one of 3 operators with a different starting weapon; two of them unlock after you defeat 3 and 10 swarm leaders.

Dark contracts, gravity well and the gold target

In the terminal you can sign dark contracts. They make the run harder until it ends, for example with a denser swarm or faster enemies, but each one raises your score multiplier. The gravity well pulls the whole swarm into one spot, and fallen enemies drop swarm fragments: fill that meter and you become the swarm yourself for 20 seconds. Sometimes a gold target appears; catch it before it escapes and it leaves a chest.

Daily and weekly goals

Each day brings a new challenge with its own rule and a mutated arena that is the same for every player that day. The weekly challenge asks you to reach wave 15. Daily supplies, 21 achievements with permanent bonuses and 12 unit skins, including the color shifting PRISM, give you reasons to come back.

Controls on a computer and a phone

On a computer you move with WASD or the arrow keys, dash with Space or Shift for a moment of invulnerability, call an orbital strike with E or Q when it is charged, use the gravity well with F and pause with Esc or P. On a phone a virtual joystick sits on the left and the dash and strike buttons on the right. A typical run lasts around 5 minutes, or as long as you can survive.