One ship. One run. Several rapidly worsening decisions.
Nova Swarm is a fast arcade shoot 'em up about reading the chaos, shaping a run through Tactical Drafts, and surviving whatever the next sector has against you.
Choose a ship, launch, carve through shifting formations, and face a major boss at the end of every sector. The controls are immediate. The patterns are learnable. The screen is allowed to become gloriously unreasonable.
Build the run while you fight
Every defeated boss opens the Tactical Draft. Choose one run-long augment from three offers and steer the run toward heavier damage, faster Phase recovery, stronger drones, defensive failsafes, or specialist builds.
There are 32 Tactical Augments across Offense, Mobility, Defense, and Utility. Many can stack. Some evolve into stronger effects. One rescan can rescue a terrible offer, or replace it with three different terrible offers.
Temporary powerups matter, but the Draft gives each run a longer memory. By the later sectors, your ship should feel shaped by your decisions.
Three ways to launch
- Mayhem Run is the ranked route from Sector 1. Earn career XP, unlock ships and checkpoints, chase achievements, and submit to the global leaderboard.
- Scout Run is lower-pressure practice for learning patterns, testing ships, and experimenting with builds without affecting career progression or leaderboards.
- Sector Run starts from checkpoints unlocked through Mayhem, so experienced pilots can practice deeper routes and chase separate sector records.
Clear the main ten-sector route and Overrun opens. The run keeps going, the score keeps climbing, and increasingly loud milestone rewards mark how far into trouble you have traveled.
Bosses bring friends
Nova Swarm's bosses are built around distinct silhouettes, movement rhythms, telegraphs, and attack patterns. Later encounters can call reinforcements, deploy support craft, receive emergency refueling, shield key targets, and turn a clean arena into a crowded tactical problem.
The danger is dense, but it is meant to be read. Learn the windup, find the lane, break the support network, and make the next attempt look suspiciously competent.
30 ships, not 30 paint jobs
The 30-ship hangar covers steady starter craft, spread weapons, precision cannons, drone specialists, Phase-focused interceptors, heavy late-career hulls, and a few machines that appear to have passed certification through personal connections.
Each ship has its own trait, weapon behavior, handling, strengths, and tradeoffs. Later unlocks push into more specialized strengths, sharper tradeoffs, and stranger ways to play.
A career built from runs
Every attempt feeds a larger arcade career:
- Pilot ranks, ship unlocks, checkpoint starts, and career goals
- Pilot Orders introduce focused Mayhem challenges that reward advanced movement, target prioritization, combo control, and other deliberate ways to play
- A Threat Codex that records enemies, elites, bosses, patterns, sectors, run themes, and discovered augments
- Detailed Run Reports covering combat, survival, progression, Tactical upgrades, and counter-advice
- Local records, Steam global leaderboards, Steam Achievements, and Steam Cloud support
- Keyboard and controller support, with optional mouse fire
Nova Swarm is built for the moment after a loss when you already know what you will do differently. Pick another ship. Draft a better build. Ignore the obviously cursed bonus core.
One more run should be fine.
