Coming soon

About This Game

Build the horde. Herd it. Detonate it.

CHAIN NOVA is an action roguelite that plays like a survivors-style game but asks you to think like a chain-reaction puzzle.
You have two controls: move and NOVA. No aiming.
Lead the swarm around, pack it into a tight blob, and detonate a NOVA when the moment is right. Every popped enemy sends out a ring, every enemy it touches pops in turn, and the whole swarm goes down like dominoes.

Features

• One NOVA, a screen full of dominoes - NOVA detonates where you stand. Rings from popped enemies set off their neighbors, and a swarm of up to 400 enemies bursts outward in waves. Every enemy you pop flashes its own score where it died.
  
• The swarm is your deck - Cross a score threshold and a DRAFT opens with 3 cards. Upgrade yourself, or mix ■ ▲ ◆ ★ ◎ shapes into the swarm. You design the enemies you are about to blow up.
  
• The settlement clash - During a chain, BASE and MULT grow on opposite sides. When the chain stops, they collide in the middle and multiply. ■ spikes MULT, and ◆ pushes the multiplier from ×1.5 to ×2.0 to ×2.5 and beyond.
  
• Chains you can read - No physics engine. The same situation always gives the same result, so a huge chain is something you built, not luck.
  
• Hear the chain - Each link raises the pitch by one step, and the settlement lands on a chord. The music stacks up layers as your chains and waves grow.
  
• The final-5-seconds RUSH - With 10 seconds left a warning hits, then a voiced 5-4-3-2-1 countdown. The last 5 seconds are RUSH: every pop pays ×1.5 BASE. Hit the quota and CLEAR! slams in while the overflow counts up. A buzzer-beater chain feels incredible.
  
• FEVER - Chains fill the FEVER gauge. When it is full, 8 seconds of FEVER: a dense swarm pours in, blast rings grow, the music goes all out, and FEVER END pays everything you earned during FEVER once more.
  
• Done in about 10 minutes - 7 waves plus a boss, about 10 minutes per run. Die, and the next run starts right away with no loading.
  
• Evolutions - Own the right two cards and an evolution card appears in the DRAFT. ★ plus BIG RING becomes GIGA STAR: the finished form of your build.
  
• Three Cores - Your ship's shape decides your NOVA: a ring around you (RING), a long piercing wave forward (LANCE), or a cross in four directions (CROSS). Same swarm, a different way to herd and fire. Triangle and Square unlock as you play.
  
• Three stages, three bosses - ORIGIN, the plain arena, ends with the giant NOVA CORE. VORTEX spins the swarm into its eye, and GEMINI's three spinning twins must be pierced by one chain. CRUSH squeezes the swarm with closing walls, and WISP flees until your swarm surrounds it. Beat a boss to open the next stage.
  
• An ending for clearing every stage - Beat the last boss and every shape on screen bursts in one final chain, the logo builds itself, your records count up and the credits roll. Watch it again any time from the title.
  
• Heat - After START, pick a Heat level from 0 to 5. A bigger, faster swarm in exchange for a score multiplier.
  
• Chests - Elites drop chests. Touch one to charge it open: 1, 3 or 5 prizes, from coins and score bonuses to cards and relics. A five-prize jackpot gets a golden pillar of light.
  
• Coins and the vacuum - Enemies drop coins. Grab a VACUUM and every spark and coin on the field flies to you.
  
• DRAFT tools - Reroll, skip and banish to shape what the DRAFT offers.
  
• Stardust Lab - Earn stardust from every run and spend it on 12 permanent upgrades: faster NOVA recharge, a higher starting multiplier, a wider pickup radius, extra DRAFT rerolls and more. Each run starts a little different. Upgrades can be switched off in the Lab at any time.
  
• Codex - Every shape, card, relic, evolution and achievement you meet is recorded, with a NEW! mark on fresh finds.
  
• Steam Achievements - 22 of them, from your first CHAIN NOVA to a Heat 5 boss kill and clearing every stage.

How to Play

• Your auto-shot picks off stragglers away from the swarm, causing small chains and dropping sparks. Collecting sparks speeds up NOVA recharge.
  
• NOVA uses stocks (2 to start, up to 3). You are briefly invulnerable right after firing, so it also works as an escape. Go for the big chain, or fire to get out?
  
• Touching an enemy costs a heart (you have 3). Enemies never shoot.
  
• Each wave has a score quota. Missing it costs no hearts, but your score is ×0.8 for the next wave.
  
• From wave 3, elites appear. Defeat one to choose 1 of 2 relics.
  
• Each stage ends with a boss. Chain length is damage: a big chain tears off a huge chunk of its health, and a big chain on a weakened boss breaks it in one hit.
  
• The first time something happens, a one-line hint shows up just then (keyboard or gamepad prompts; can be turned off). The title screen runs live, self-playing gameplay behind the menu.

Shapes

Every shape has its own form and color.

• ● Dot - standard ring
  
• ■ Block (red) - small ring, MULT +1
  
• ▲ Arrow (yellow) - dashes at you, pops into a piercing beam
  
• ◆ Prism (cyan) - multiplies your multiplier (rare)
  
• ★ Star (gold) - orbits you, pops with a double-size blast
  
• ◎ Shell (purple) - pops twice and relays the chain

Chain Tiers

GOOD → NICE! → GREAT!! → INFERNO → SUPERNOVA → SUPERNOVA ×2 → CHAIN NOVA
Reach CHAIN 400, or wipe out every enemy in view with one chain, to trigger CHAIN NOVA. Every settlement after that is stronger for the rest of the run.

Made for Clips, Easy on the Eyes

• Cinema mode (F10): hide the HUD and keep only the chain count and settlement numbers
  
• 9:16 guide frame and vertical capture mode for short-form video
  
• BEST MOMENT on the results screen: max chain, best single settlement, peak points per second, and your RUSH bonus
  
• Flash reduction (white-outs and inverts become dim fades), screen shake strength (0-100%), and a flashing-lights notice at startup
  
• Separate Master, Music, Sound Effects and Voice volume
  
• Key config: rebind the keyboard (two keys per action) and the gamepad

What's Included

• 3 stages (ORIGIN, VORTEX, CRUSH), 8 shapes, elites, and 3 bosses (NOVA CORE, GEMINI, WISP)
  
• 3 cores, 6 Heat levels (0-5), 12 permanent upgrades
  
• 27 upgrades, 8 swarm cards, 14 relics
  
• Keyboard & mouse / gamepad
  
• English and Japanese

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

The Steam store artwork (capsule and library images) was created with an image generation AI (ChatGPT) and then selected and edited by the developer. The game's icon (the executable and Steam library icon) is a cropped and edited piece of that AI-generated logo. All other in-game graphics (shapes, effects and UI) were drawn by the developer's own code without generative AI. Sound effects and music were synthesized by the developer's own programs, and the countdown voice is a recorded human voice from a free asset pack (Kenney, CC0); none of the audio uses generative AI. The store descriptions and the achievement names and descriptions were drafted with a text generation AI (Claude Code) and reviewed and revised by the developer. Nothing is generated by AI while you play.