Defend six cities from a raining barrage, not by firing back, but by bending each warhead off course.
Enemy warheads rain down toward your six cities and three fuel depots. Instead of shooting them, you redraw their trajectories: drag a warhead to a new heading and it flies off along the path you traced, spending fuel in proportion to how sharply you bent it. Steer them off the top or sides to escape harmlessly, or aim two into each other so both vanish. Survive the waves without losing your cities.
Aegis draws on Missile Command, released by Atari in 1980 and played by a public living under the real version of the threat it depicts: a rain of warheads falling on six cities in your care, intercepted by counter-missiles you aim with a trackball. Dave Theurer, who designed it, has said the game gave him nightmares while he was building it.
What makes it last is that it refuses to let you win. Your missiles travel slowly and must be aimed where a warhead is going rather than where it is, the waves only accelerate, and there is no final screen to reach. Every game ends with your cities gone and the words THE END, which in 1980 was a startling thing for an arcade cabinet to say to a child holding a quarter.
Aegis is an original city-defense game that swaps shooting for trajectory-bending and fuel management. A free browser game with deterministic, reproducible waves, made in-house at PlayPendium.