Skimmer

You fly a fast ship along a continuously wrapping planet. Alien landers descend to grab the humanoids on the ground and haul them skyward, if one reaches the top, it becomes a deadly mutant. Shoot the landers, catch falling humanoids, and set them back down to keep the surface alive.

• Fly in both directions to patrol the whole wrapping world.
• Destroy a lander carrying a humanoid, then catch the falling person and lower them safely.
• Lose all your humanoids and the surface turns into a swarm of mutants.

• Desktop: Left/Right or A/D to fly and reverse, Up/Down to climb and dive, Space to fire, B for a smart bomb, H for hyperspace, P to pause. Keyboard recommended.
• Phone & tablet: keyboard play recommended, this fast shooter needs many distinct inputs.

• Patrol proactively, intercept landers before they reach a humanoid rather than chasing abductions.
• Save smart bombs for the moment the screen swarms with mutants.
• Catch a dropped humanoid immediately; a falling person dies if they hit the ground.

Skimmer is a tribute to Defender, released by Williams in 1981 and designed by Eugene Jarvis, notorious for a control panel of five buttons and a two-way stick that defeated most first-time players.

It had a world larger than the screen, tracked on a scanner strip along the top, and the humanoids on the surface are the point of it. Let the abductors carry them all away and the planet explodes, at which point the remaining aliens mutate into something far faster. So the game punishes players who treat it as a shooter: surviving is easy, and rescuing is what actually keeps the level alive.

Skimmer is an original take on the horizontal-scrolling rescue shooter genre, free to play instantly in your browser.

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