Planned Release Date: Dec 3, 2026

About This Game

Rastergeist is a scrolling shooter in the line of Raptor and Tyrian, with a hangar where you build the ship one block at a time. Guns, engines, generators, shields, armor, a magnet for loose scrap. Whatever you put on the grid is what flies, and whatever flies can be hit.

A bullet damages the part it touches. Lose a cannon and its fire is gone for the rest of the stage. Lose a generator and the whole ship runs short of power, guns included. Lose the core and you're headed back to the hangar to rebuild the ship before trying again. Protect parts with armor, provide full ship protection with rechargeable shields, or optimize a sleek build focused on reducing your hitbox to dodge the hail of bullets coming your way.

Rules that push back

• Guns need a clear lane to the front of the hull. Put armor in front of a cannon and it can't fire, so your best weapons always sit up front, where the bullets are.

• Engines need room behind them. A narrow ship is a slow ship.

• A gun touching a generator fires 10% faster, which tempts you to move your power forward. Into the bullets.

• Glass is armor your own shots pass straight through. It's thin. It's also the only thing you can put in front of a gun.

Credits and scrap

Kills pay credits. Enemies drop salvage, and they drop what they're made of: shoot down a shielded gunship and you get emitters, not engine parts. Bosses drop blueprints. Repairs come out of your pay, and the big Mk III parts cost far more to fix than the little ones, which you tend to notice right around the time you can afford them.

Campaign forks across the six sectors

The main campaign is 28 stages across six sectors, each stage with its own boss and its own two pieces of music. Every sector forks at least once. Take one branch and the other closes for the rest of that playthrough, along with the exclusive ship part from the branches not taken. The full run plays 20 stages, leaving you options to try different components on your next campaign run!

Second campaign: Landfall

Landfall is a second campaign, built into the game and open from the start: 25 stages across four sectors, flown low over a human colony world the enemy has taken. One day passes as you fight from the coast to the capital, from dawn on the coast through a storm in the highlands and dusk in the interior to night in the capital, and the enemy's magenta scan-lattice spreads over everything as you go. It brings 21 new bosses, 11 new midbosses, 25 backdrops of its own, six new ship parts to win from its bosses, and 30 new songs, every stage with a track of its own. Its route forks too, 16 stages to a playthrough, and it's tuned for pilots who have made it through the main campaign. Two campaigns, 53 stages.

Endless Run

A roguelite beside the campaigns, and it never ends. Its stages are remixed from the main campaign's waves and bosses, flown over fifty backdrops (22 of them never seen in either campaign), and they get harder for as long as you last. You start in a slim ship with one gun. After every stage you take one card of three: a part, a boost, or now and then more hull to build on, with a few rerolls and banishes to steer the draft. Nothing is for sale and nothing gets repaired, so a part shot off is gone for the rest of the run. Two players can fly a run together, each drafting for their own ship.

Every day brings a daily run: the same stages and the same cards for everyone, on a Steam leaderboard of its own. Each day's place earns points toward the month's standings, so every daily counts.

Bring someone

Two players, one screen, thousands of bullets. A second player can join between any two stages with their own ship and their own build. Players share a pool of parts and credits. Steam Remote Play Together works too, and only the host needs to own the game.

Make your own

The editors the campaign was built with ship in the game. Lay waves out on a timeline that follows the music's verses and choruses, tune enemies, draw their ships, wire up a route map, and publish the result to the Steam Workshop. The music editor opens any track in the game as a remix. Custom campaigns and music are distributed in an easy to share, edit, and play format that allows experimenting without downloading massive updates.

Also

• Every stage is crafted to its soundtrack, leading into the boss track at the end.

• Optional challenges on each stage earn Mastery points for boosts. Repeat prior stages to earn more points, salvage more parts, and get more credits to boost your ship if you're having trouble.

• Full controller support and rebinding, with button prompts drawn for Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo and Steam Deck.

• Screen flash, shake and glitch effects can be turned down or off.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

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

AI was utilized to implement localization for languages other than English.