Funnel

You skim around the rim of a segmented tube, firing down its lanes at enemies that climb toward your edge. There's a twist: the tube is flooding from below. Every kill drains the fluid a notch, but every enemy that reaches the rim raises it, and if the surface touches your rim, you drown. Keep clearing to stay above water.

• Move around the rim to line your gun up with each lane.
• Fire down the lanes; enemies that sink below the waterline turn faster and harder to see, and your shots drag through the fluid.
• Drain the flood by killing enemies, let them reach the top and it rises.

• Desktop: Left/Right or A/D to move around the rim, Space to fire, Z or Shift to clear.
• Phone & tablet: tap the left or right half to move and tap to fire, touch supported.

• Prioritize enemies nearest the rim, each one that escapes raises the deadly flood.
• Keep circling so you can answer threats on every lane, not just one side.
• Save your clear move for when several lanes fill at once or the water gets high.

Funnel draws on Tempest, released by Atari in 1981 and designed by Dave Theurer, who had made Missile Command the year before. You ride the rim of a geometric well drawn in glowing vector lines, firing down its lanes at things climbing toward you.

The spinner control is what people remember: a free-spinning knob with no centre, so the player's hand, not a stick, sets the speed. The Superzapper clears the screen once per level and then, weakly, once more — a resource that punishes panic. Tempest also let players choose a higher starting level, which was unusual, and made it one of the first arcade games that respected a good player's time.

Funnel is an original take on the geometric-tube shooter genre, with a flooding-survival twist, free to play in your browser.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.