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Flight formation shooter

Pro packv3.0.0-12DArcade

A fixed shooter where enemies fly in, form up and dive: flight programs, a swaying formation, dives with escorts, tractor-beam capture and rescue, and challenging stages. Everything is data, and a classic preset is the starting point rather than the only game.

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Released October 19, 2026 · updated October 20, 2026

Flight formation shooter: 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

Each stage spawns its entry waves. Groups fly in along flight programs, short lists of steps that turn, change speed, aim at the player, run until a height or fire, and mirrored flights negate the turns so a pair sweeps in from both sides at once. Each enemy ends at its slot in the formation. While anyone is still arriving the formation sways, and once all are home it breathes in and out, and slotPosition gives any slot's live position for drawing.

After the entry, dives begin. At set intervals, while fewer than the allowed number of groups are out, a side is chosen in turn and a kind by weight, and it dives along one of its programs, taking escorts from the row below. A program ends by flying home, leaving the bottom and re-entering from the top, leaving for good, or stopping to lower a tractor beam. When few enemies are left, the interval halves and one more group may dive. All of these values are ramps over the stage number, so a game grows harder as it goes.

The capture rule is the heart of the genre. A boss on a capture dive lowers a beam that opens, holds and closes; a fighter under it is pulled up and rides home above the boss, costing a life. Shoot that boss while it is away from the formation and the ship returns as a dual fighter, firing twice the missiles with a target twice as wide. Shoot it while it sits in formation and the captive turns hostile. Bosses take two hits, escorts shot in the same dive pay rising bonuses, and challenging stages bring flyers that never fire and pay per hit, per perfect group and for a perfect stage. It runs at a fixed step, draws nothing and replays the same for a seed and an input sequence.

Features

  • Flight programs — steps of turn, speed, aim, height and fire, mirrored for pairs, ending home, wrapping, exiting or lowering a beam.
  • A living formation — slots that sway during the entry and breathe afterwards, with live positions to draw.
  • Weighted dives with escorts — kinds chosen by weight, escorts from the row below, and a frenzy when few remain.
  • Tractor-beam capture and rescue — a beam with its own geometry and timing, a captive that rides home, a dual fighter on rescue and a hostile ship if the boss is shot in formation.
  • Two-hit bosses and escort bonuses — 400, 800 and 1,600 for escorts shot in the same dive.
  • Challenging stages — their own wave sets, one-hit flyers that leave the screen, and per-hit, group and perfect bonuses.
  • Ramps — dive intervals, limits and weights that change with the stage.
  • Builders — galagaSlots and galagaEntry lay out a centred formation and entry groups for any rows.
  • Deterministic and headless — fixed step, seeded, with snapshots and a launchDive for scripted moments.

Good for

  • Classic formation shooters in the style of Galaga, with capture, rescue and challenging stages.
  • Dive-bombing fixed shooters in the style of Galaxian, with escorts and no beams.
  • Bigger or smaller racks of your own shape, from a handful of ships to a wall of dozens.
  • A boss with escorts inside a larger shooter, using the dive and escort rules alone.
  • Attract modes and tests, since a seed and an input list always replay the same.

Make it yours

galagaPreset takes the rows, group size, lives, whether capture is on, when challenging stages start and how often they come, aggression, the most shots on screen, extra-life scores and the seed. Any field of the configuration can also be replaced: kinds with their scores, hit points, sizes, dive programs, escorts and capture, the slots and formation geometry, sway and breathing, the program library, entry and challenging waves, speeds and ramps, dive weights and limits, beam geometry and timing, enemy fire, the fighter and the bonuses.

Two quite different games from one pack: the classic arrangement with tractor beams and a challenging stage every few stages; and a lean 22-ship variant in groups of six with no beams and challenging stages every second stage. The same rules also run a 66-ship wall flying in by groups of ten.

A quick look

The classic preset, ticked with the player's input:

const ff = game.flightFormation;
const g = ff.createGalaga(ff.galagaPreset());
g.tick(dt, { move, fire });
for (const e of g.drain()) { /* stage-start, dive, beam, captured, rescued, enemy-killed, challenge-result ... */ }
g.slotPosition('boss-r0c3');                                 // live slot position (sway, breathing)
g.beams;                                                     // tractor beams to draw

Works with

Good to know

  • One player; two-player alternation, an attract-mode demo and sound are left to the presentation.
  • The flight programs are approximations of the classic paths, not copies of the original tables; enemy morphing and rank-based difficulty are not modelled.
  • A captured fighter does not carry over to a later stage, and a capture on the last fighter ends the game.
  • Formations are limited to 10,000 slots.
  • Snapshots hold the state but not the configuration, so restore into a game built from the same definition.

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