COSMIC DODGE ▶ Play

How to play Cosmic Dodge

One rule: do not get hit. The clock is your score, and the storm never stops growing.

Controls

ActionKeys
Move or WASD
Start / restartSpace
Restart instantlyR
PauseP or Esc

You can also steer by holding the mouse button or dragging your finger — the ship moves toward the cursor.

There is no inertia. Press a key and the ship is instantly at full speed; release it and the ship stops dead. Nothing carries over, so a dodge is exactly as long as you hold the key. This is what makes pixel-tight movement possible once the screen fills up.

How the difficulty grows

Three things scale with your survival time, and they compound:

Roughly 9 missiles share the screen at 5 seconds, about 46 at 30 seconds, and over 130 past the one-minute mark. Getting to 60 seconds is a genuinely hard run.

What is actually shooting at you

Every missile is aimed at where your ship was when it spawned, plus a random error. It never re-targets. That single fact is the whole game: a missile is a prediction, and you beat it by not being where you were.

The first second of every run is a shield window: nothing spawns, and you get a moment to breathe.

Tactics that actually work

Keep moving, but move small

Because missiles lead your old position, standing still is fatal and sprinting across the field runs you into the waves already in flight. Short, constant repositioning beats both.

Stay near the middle

Edges look safe because fewer missiles come from behind you, but the wall removes an escape direction. Cornered against an edge with three missiles inbound, there is no answer. The center always has four ways out.

Read the gaps, not the dots

Past 30 seconds there are too many objects to track individually. Stop looking at missiles and start looking at the empty space between them. Aim for where the gap will be, not where it is.

Move perpendicular

Against a dense wave, moving sideways across their path clears far more distance than backing away in a straight line. Retreating just keeps you in the firing lane longer.

Your records

Your ten best times are kept in your browser's local storage — on your device only. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account. Clearing your browser data, or playing in a different browser or private window, means starting from an empty list. You can wipe the list yourself with Clear records on the game-over screen.

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