Phaser home
Log inCreate a game

← Expansion packsArcade

Phaser AE

Actor movement chips

Free packv3.0.0-22DArcade

The movement behaviours arcade enemies are made of: seek, flee, orbit, home in, patrol, wander and more. Each chip is one step of one behaviour on any object with a position and a velocity, so they mix freely and fit whatever your game already uses for its things.

This is a Free pack. Every phaser.io account can use it in their games.

Released October 14, 2026 · updated October 19, 2026

Actor movement chips: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

A mover is anything with x, y, vx and vy, and optionally a rotation. Every chip takes the mover, its target, its numbers and the frame's dt, and moves it one step. seek accelerates towards a point and flee away from one; orbit circles a point by steering, so a released orbiter keeps its momentum; home flies at a constant speed with a limited turn rate, which is what makes a missile dodgeable; approach walks straight at a target and says when it has arrived; patrol loops through waypoints; wander nudges a heading at random. Because each chip is just a step, an enemy can seek the player while evading bullets, or patrol until the player comes in range.

Around the chips sit the pieces every arcade game ends up writing. integrate applies velocity with drag per second, gravity and a speed cap, so the feel stays the same at any frame rate. splitInto breaks one thing into several at its position, each keeping the parent's momentum plus an outward fan, so a rock breaks rather than two new rocks appearing. A Timer fires on the step it runs out, and its use spends a ready timer once and re-arms it, which is a reload in one line. hyperspace jumps a mover to a random spot clear of everything you list, with a chance of a bad landing if you want one.

Features

  • Pursuit and escape — seek, flee, evade the nearest threat in range, and approach with no momentum.
  • Missiles and orbits — home with a turn-rate limit, orbit by steering, converge on a centre at a fixed rate.
  • Routines — patrol waypoints in a loop, wander at random, drift at constant velocity with spin.
  • Aim-aware enemies — avoidAim advances only while the player is not aiming at it.
  • Carrying — carry places cargo on its carrier at an offset, for thieves that steal and run.
  • Motion — integrate with per-second drag, gravity and a speed cap; speedOf and faceVelocity.
  • Splitting — splitInto breaks a parent into children that inherit its momentum, with count, speed and spread.
  • Timers — createTimer with repeat, a ready start, a consume-once use, progress and reset.
  • Hyperspace — a random jump a set distance clear of listed objects, with an optional danger rate.

Good for

  • Fixed-screen arcade shooters, where mines seek, bombs home and saucers patrol, in the style of Asteroids.
  • Arena shooters with crowds of chasers, each a chip or two, in the style of Robotron.
  • Rock-blasting games that need splitting with momentum and a hyperspace button.
  • Closing-in attacks, where enemies tighten on a point at a fixed rate with converge.
  • Raiders that carry things away, using carry and flee together.
  • Weapon reloads and spawn timers anywhere, using the timer's reload gate.

Make it yours

Every chip takes its own numbers, so tuning an enemy is changing a handful of values: acceleration, drag and top speed for a seeker, speed and turn rate for a missile, radius and rate for an orbiter, speed and waypoints for a patrol. Chips combine per enemy and change by state, and the random chips take your own seeded random function.

Two materially different uses: a space shooter where mines seek the ship with light drag, bombs home at 140 units a second turning two radians a second, and rocks drift and splitInto two on a hit; and a maze shooter where robots approach the player in straight lines, a thief carrys a pickup while it flees, and a Timer paces each wave's spawns.

A quick look

Seeking mines, homing bombs, a reload gate and a rock that splits:

import { chips, splitInto, createTimer } from '@phaser-ae/actors';
const reload = createTimer(0.25, { ready: true });
game.step('enemies', dt => {
  for (const m of mines) chips.seek(m, ship, { accel: 120, drag: 0.4, maxSpeed: 160 }, dt);
  for (const b of bombs) chips.home(b, ship, { speed: 140, turn: 2 }, dt);
  if (fire && reload.use()) shoot();
  reload.update(dt);
});
const pieces = splitInto(rock, { count: 2, speed: 50, rng: () => game.rng.next() });

Works with

  • maths — required, for angles.
  • steering — for flocks and crowds that avoid each other.
  • control-feels — for the player's own control profiles.
  • interaction-rules — for what happens when one kind of thing meets another.
  • asteroid-field — when you want a complete rock-blasting game's rules rather than the parts.

Good to know

  • Chips move the mover themselves, so do not also let physics move the same object in the same step.
  • They steer one agent at a time, with no flocking, separation or crowd avoidance; steering has those.
  • hyperspace gives up after its number of tries, 20 by default, and lands where the last try fell.
  • The pack draws nothing and holds no list of actors; your game owns its objects and calls the chips.

More Arcade packs

Show all →