Controls and weapons
Timeline Blastar is keyboard-first. Mouse works in menus; in the game itself, you're flying with your left hand and aiming with your right thumb on the space bar.
Movement
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| WASD / Arrow keys | Move spaceship (8 directions) |
| Space | Fire active weapon — hold to keep firing |
| Mouse wheel over hotbar | Cycle weapon slot |
Hotbar (1–9)
The hotbar is your nine weapon slots. Press the number key to switch. The currently-selected slot is highlighted at the bottom of the screen.
| Slot | Weapon | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🔫 Bullets | Infinite. Default. GLASSCANNON ship fires twin cannons. |
| 2 | 📢 Megaphone | Slow fire rate. Single huge shout (SEGFAULT, RTFM, L+RATIO…). High damage. |
| 3 | 💣 Nuke | 3 per run. Instantly kills boss-post + every enemy on screen. Local-only. |
| 4 | 🎉 Celebrate | Rainbow emoji spray. Triggers crowd cheers. |
| 5 | 🎭 Meme Blaster | 3-word rainbow burst (SKIBIDI, RIZZ, GYATT, SKILL ISSUE…). |
| 6 | 💬 Comment Gun | First hit on an X post opens a real-reply modal — posts back to X. |
| 7 | ❤️ Like Gun | First hit on an X post sends a real Like via the X API. |
| 8 | 🔭 Discovery | Wide upward cone. Pauses 20s on arxiv papers so you can read the abstract. |
| 9 | 📦 Inventory slot | Drag any backpack weapon onto here in the inventory screen. |
Study weapons (the curiosity row)
Five extra guns sit in the backpack. They don't kill — they reveal (or, in the Bookmark Gun's case, save). Drag any of them onto a hotbar slot to use them. Together they turn a blasting session into a research session, with shareable artifacts at the end.
| Gun | Ammo | What it does | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📜 Wiki Gun | scroll bullets | Hit a post → spawns a Wikipedia card with the lead paragraph for an interesting word in that post. Card drifts upward and fades after ~10s. | Free |
| 💡 Grok Gun | lightbulb bullets | Hit a post → a 5-second "💡 ASK GROK" chip attaches. Click an action and Grok opens in a new tab with the post + URL pre-filled. Five actions: Fact-check / Find source / Counter-argument / Translate to German / Explain like I'm 5. | Free |
| 📖 Etymology Gun | book bullets | AI picks the single most-interesting word in the post; an etymology ribbon appears under the post for ~10s. Wiktionary first; AI fallback flagged (per AI, unverified). | Free |
| 🧠 Memetic Gun | brain bullets | Layered: shot 1 reveals the hook (the phrase that pulled you in + why it works), shot 2 tags every rhetorical device (anaphora, appeal-to-authority, strawman…). Game pauses 20s per layer (SPACE/ESC skips). | 3 COINS hook · 5 COINS rhetoric |
| 🔖 Bookmark Gun | star bullets | Hit a post → saves the post to your public bookmark page at /p/<handle>/bookmarks. Idempotent on re-hit. Capped at 30 bookmarks per session. Full guide: Bookmarks and discovery. | Free |
How they fit together
Think of these as a second hotbar row: when you want to understand a post instead of destroy it, switch to a study weapon. The kill loop pauses; you read; you screenshot the analysis; you share the artifact. The Memetic Gun's Save Card button downloads a 1080×1080 PNG share-card showing the post + the analysis breakdown, perfect for posting back to X to expose how the post worked rhetorically.
When to use which
- Hot take you don't recognize → Wiki Gun first. Probably has a named-entity you've never heard of.
- Source-less claim that smells off → Grok Gun → Find the source. Grok pulls the receipts in its own tab.
- A neologism / meme you want to look up → Etymology Gun. (Wiki Gun for actual concepts; Etymology Gun for slang.)
- **A post that worked on you and you want to understand why** → Memetic Gun. The killer share-card moment.
Failure paths
- Wiki Gun: word has no Wikipedia entry → small toast "(no wiki entry — try Etymology?)" and the gun nudges you toward the right tool.
- Grok Gun: tab opens in browser; if Grok rejects the prompt URL we can't tell from a popup, so the action is best-effort.
- Etymology Gun: word not in Wiktionary → AI fallback runs, ribbon is tagged (per AI, unverified) so you know to double-check.
- Memetic Gun: empty wallet → universal payment popup opens with a context-aware "you need N COINS to fire memetic gun" banner. Buy COINS, come back, the gun is loaded.
Inventory (E)
Press E to open the inventory. Ten extra guns sit in your backpack — drag any of them onto a hotbar slot to swap. The displaced gun lands back in your bag, Minecraft-style. Loadout resets to defaults at the start of every new session.
Special keys
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| X | Universal share — triggers the primary share button in any open share modal |
| Q | In Blast Battle: Pong-reflect mode (10s budget per round, bounces enemy bullets back) |
| H | Open this help / wiki |
| P / Esc | Pause / resume |
| Esc | Close any open modal · In Blast Battle: forfeit the match |
| 🎤 (hold) | Record distorted space-voice curses into your kill clip |
| M | (TTS announcer currently disabled — music keeps playing) |
Audio
The game has two audio streams:
- Music — toggle via the music note in the top-left, or use the music menu. Two original tracks plus a four-part documentary playlist that the SHOOTING STARS modes lean on.
- SFX — every weapon, every kill, every UI event has a synthesized sound. The volume slider is in the music menu.
The microphone button (🎤) starts a recording overlay — hold it down to capture your voice through a chain of distortion + chorus + saturation effects. The recorded curse plays back inside your kill-clip video, layered on top of the game audio.
Mobile / touch
Touch controls work on phones and tablets. A virtual joystick appears bottom-left, fire button bottom-right. The hotbar slots are tappable. Mobile sessions also support recording (the mic icon long-press triggers the same overlay).
Gamepad / controller
A USB or Bluetooth gamepad is auto-detected on connect. Default mapping:
- Left stick — move
- A / X (south button) — fire
- D-pad up/down — cycle hotbar
- L1 / R1 — slot–1 / slot+1
- Start — pause
- Select — open inventory
Gamepad works in the title screen too — D-pad navigates buttons, A confirms.
SNES-style retro pad
If you've got a USB SNES-style retro pad (sold by 8BitDo, Buffalo, etc.) it just works. The game maps:
- B — fire
- A — universal share (same as the X key)
- X — switch to next weapon
- Y — switch to previous weapon
- L / R — also slot cycle
- Select — inventory
- Start — pause
This is the original way the game was designed to be played.
Want to know what each of those weapons is actually for? → Blasting tactics.