Hold the bottom of the screen as alien formations peel off and dive-bomb you in screaming arcs.
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How to play
Enemies fly in along swooping paths, settle into a breathing formation, then peel off to dive at you before returning to it. The boss can fire a tractor beam that captures your ship — and if you shoot the boss while it still holds your fighter, you get it back not as a second gun but as a wingman you keep.
You move left and right along the bottom and fire upward, with only two shots on screen at a time.
A rescued fighter joins your swarm as a wingman, and your firepower grows with each one.
Wingmen follow your movement on a spring, with lag — sharp dodges fling them out of line and they take time to re-converge.
They are shields and liabilities at once: a hit picks off a wingman before it costs you a life, but a bigger swarm is a bigger target.
Every few stages is a challenge wave of non-firing enemies, scored purely on how many you hit.
Controls
Desktop: Left/Right or A/D (or drag) to move, Space or the FIRE button to shoot.
Phone & tablet: drag to move and tap the FIRE button, fully touch-supported.
Tips & strategy
Fly smoothly once you have wingmen. They lag behind hard changes of direction, so a panicked dodge opens a gap in your own firepower exactly when you need it.
Letting the boss capture a fighter is a real tactic, not a disaster — but only if you can kill it before the stage ends, or you have simply lost a life.
A large swarm covers more area than you do. Dodging as though you are still one ship is how wingmen get shot off you.
Enemies are most vulnerable in formation and most dangerous mid-dive, so thin the grid between attack runs rather than during them.
Challenge waves cannot hurt you. Take every shot you can rather than playing them safe.
Origins
Swarm Dive revisits Galaga, released by Namco in 1981 as the successor to Galaxian, refining the alien-invasion formula rather than repeating it.
Enemies arrive in flying formations before settling, then peel off in curving dives, so the screen alternates between a fixed target and a moving one. Its famous idea is the tractor beam: a boss enemy can capture your fighter, and if you then shoot that boss you get the ship back joined to your own, doubling your fire at the cost of a much wider target. Deliberately losing a ship to gain the pair is a real tactic.
About Swarm Dive
Swarm Dive is an original take on the diving-formation fixed-screen shooter genre, free to play instantly in your browser.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
