About This Game

Cosmic Destroyer is a high-intensity horizontal shooter built for precision, speed, and high-stakes action. Blast through tight, twisting routes in handcrafted stages with dynamic path choices. Outmaneuver swarms of enemies, smash into fortified bases, and chase down wily bosses with combat focused on intensity, clarity, and tight controls.

Power up stylized weapons, missiles, and floating options. Salvage limited superweapons and gadgets mid-fight from enemy wreckage. Rip enemies apart and throw them into each other. Upgrade and modify your ship to fit your playstyle, whether you're chasing perfect runs or just trying to survive the chaos.

Every element is built from scratch - no stock art, no filler. Just pure, visually sharp gameplay crafted to deliver an intense, readable, and rewarding shmup experience.

Fast. Flashy. Brutal.
Cosmic Destroyer is for players who crave tight controls, pure action, and the hair-raising rush of a perfectly timed dodge through bullet hell.

Demo Available NOW!

Check out the gameplay demo which includes the first stage of the game as it has currently been developed. This currently is focused around the more challenging arcade mode which does not offer ship loadout upgrades and customization for casual play. The arcade mode features a leaderboard and you can also play Co-Op with a friend on your local machine!

Please Note: You can send public feedback to CoffeeMakerGames on Bluesky, send any bug or more detailed feedback through the CoffeeMakerGames site contact form.

Gameplay

Cosmic Destroyer's core mechanics include weapon power-ups, floating options, and screen-clearing bombs, layered with unique systems like enemy grabbing and throwing, and real-time gadget salvaging from wreckage. Two main game modes arcade and roguelite story mode are offered. Arcade mode provides a tightly tuned challenge with set loadouts. Story mode offers a more forgiving and fluid system providing ship upgrade and customization paths to adapt the game to your playstyle. Each stage offers multiple routes, encouraging replay and mastery through recognizing enemy behaviors and projectile patterns.

Grab and use objects - weapons and even other enemies 

Players can grab mountable items and small enemies found in the stage or looted from the debris of their enemies and use them to get an edge. Examples of mountable weapons include the Laser Cannon, a Railgun, and Vulcan Cannon. These mountable items are temporary, and provide a bonus or an ability while they are active. Weapons fire along with the ship's primary weapons, and may have alternate firing when charged. Enemies can also be grabbed, providing their weapons to aid the player as well as passive bonuses such as speed, firing rate, hit multiplier time extensions, and more. Held enemies can be released or launched at other enemies, colliding and causing devastating effects.

Dynamic Spline-based Stages with Branching Paths

Stages are built along splines which allow for the stage to bend, traversing around or even through asteroid caves and inside large installations. This also provides an opportunity for stages to have alternate paths and secrets to discover.

Intuitive Controls

Controls have been streamlined so the player can focus on survival and destroying everything in their path. As many actions as possible mapped to as few buttons as possible. Currently Cosmic Destroyer uses three buttons:

• Shot - fires a Wide Shot or a Focused Shot, while adjusting the player's speed. Tapping the button fires a Wide Shot which is weaker, but allows the player to move at full speed. Holding the Shot button down fires a Focused Shot that is more powerful, and also slows the player's movement speed. Focused and Wide shot also apply to any Options or Mounted Items, which will fire differently based on these fire modes. With these mechanics the player can dodge more effectively, and use appropriate weapon firing to fit the situation - all on one button.

• Attach / Detach - pick up a Mountable Item from the world and attach it to your ship, or detach your currently equipped item. If you already have an item, the items will be swapped. This gives the player the choice to use or avoid items depending on their play style.

• Special Attack / Bomb - release your ship's special attack. While this attack is active all damage to the player is nullified. Bombs will wipe all bullets from the screen, and each bullet canceled is scored.

Controls have been tested by players live with arcade controls, keyboard, gamepad, mouse can be used to trigger actions but is not set up for movement. 

Note: Split keyboard Co-Op is not supported at this time, each player must use a separate device.

True to STG Fundamentals

Every effort has been made to continue to support fundamental features which STG/SHMUP fans love. This includes, (though not limited to):

• Wide/Focus Shot and Move Speed are all controlled with one Fire button

• Options can cancel bullets and damage enemies, helping savvy players prevent damage in  scenarios and increase their score even further. Options which have absorbed bullets do more damage for a short period of time, this is visually indicated by a sparkle effect around the option as well as effects on their fired projectiles.  These behaviors are dynamic with Upgrades or different ships (depending on Game Mode)
  

• Do more damage at point-blank range, pure risk vs reward!

• Arcade 1CC hardcore mode - Play with limited continues in arcade mode where continuing wipes out your 1CC score chance, this mode ships generally have 2 hits to die. Or play pure 1CC hardcore where with no continues available and no health. The official arcade mode tracks high scores on a global online leaderboard.

• Arcade Practice mode - unlimited continues, full power, unlimited bombs on short cool down. In this mode you can start anywhere on any stage and practice sections and bosses.

• Last but not least, the ships Bomb/Hyper saves the player if activated just shortly after starting to go down. An audible percussive explosion indicates the timing, if the special button is pressed in time, the player is saved.

  

  More features are being considered, which will be evaluated based on community interest.

Scoring and Rewards

Players rack up a big score by accumulating hits to raise their multiplier. The hit counter drains over time until the next hit is registered. This multiplier applies bonuses to nearly all scoring in the game, any points earned are scored with the multiplier that was currently active. This is not a chain mechanic where you lose your multiplier, you must hit enemies to keep it going. Here are some great ways to score:

• Keep your hit multiplier up at all times by seeking out objects to hit and destroy.

• Destroying enemies and destructible objects in the world will often drop score pickups. For waves of enemies, defeating the entire wave will drop a more valuable pickup. At higher multiplier tiers, additional rewards such as power ups, bombs, options are dropped. This can even include additional player lives in extreme cases.

• Collecting power-ups of any kind when the category of power-ups is at it's maximum level.

• Grazing bullets with your options scores bullet cancel points which can be hyper effective at close range when large numbers of bullets are being fired (such as a spiral or ring pattern turret)

When the player dies, their hit multiplier timeout is extended until the next hit is registered. This same effect applies at the beginning of a stage, so that players keep their hit multiplier going after completing a stage. Any time a continue is used the player's score and hit multiplier are wiped out.

Modern Quality of Life features

Along with FM generated sound effects, pickup announcements, and a Synthwave soundtrack, you will find graphics options to embrace the arcade feel. Scanline filters with chromatic aberration can be customized to fit the emulated monitor style you want. Whether its a slightly blurred, over-bright old CRT or the crisp and clean flat "t-tron" look.

Also, your ship's hit box is only your cockpit, there is also an option to make the hit box a visible solid color.