Plays 7,646	Ratings 80	Favorites 22	Published Oct 24, 2025

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Description

Cosmic Destroyer is a high-intensity horizontal SHMUP with a grappling hook that can grab and throw enemies and objects - and even deflect enemy projectiles.

Updates Every Week on Thursday!

Updated 12/4/2025
This update brings: Ship Color Customization, two new throwable objects, improved throwing mechanics including visual charge-up animation and higher charge-up throw speed for enhanced chain reaction throws.

About

Built for precision, speed and high stakes action. Play single player or local Co-Op!
Use your Grappling Hook to grab enemies and objects, leverage enemy abilities, and throw them for big damage.
Blast through tight, twisting routes in handcrafted stages built on curves and branching paths.
Outmaneuver swarms of enemies, smash into fortified bases, and chase down wily bosses with combat focused on intensity, clarity, and tight controls.
Multiple ships, each with unique Primary weapons.
Training mode with unlimited continues and maxed-out ship upgrades to hone your skills.

Cosmic Destroyer is hand-crafted for players who crave tight controls, pure action, and the hair-raising rush of a perfectly timed dodge. This is an intense, challenging and rewarding STG experience!

Controls

All controls are re-mappable via the option menu Controls panel.

Note: Playstation 4/5 Controllers often have many issues working in a browser. Download the game demo on Steam or use an Xbox controller if you are having issues with these controllers.

Move - Arrow Keys / WASD, D-Pad and Left Stick
Shot - (Z Key / J Key, Button West on Gamepad) fires a Wide Shot or a Focused Shot, while adjusting the player's speed. Tapping the button fires a Wide Shot which is weaker, but allows the player to move at full speed. Holding the Shot button down fires a Focused Shot that is more powerful, and also slows the player's movement speed.
Note: Focused and Wide shot also apply to any Options or Mounted Items, which will fire differently based on these fire modes. With these mechanics the player can dodge more effectively, and use appropriate weapon firing to fit the situation - all on one button.
Grappling Hook & Throw - (X Key / K Key, Button South on Gamepad) pick up a Mountable Item from the world and attach it to your ship, or detach your currently equipped item. Tap the button to throw, or hold and release for a more powerful and faster throw.
Special Attack or Bomb - (C Key / Space, Button East on Gamepad) release your ship's special attack. While this attack is active all damage to the player is nullified. Bombs will wipe all bullets from the screen, and each bullet canceled is scored.
Autofire (V Key / L Key, Button North on Gamepad) Fire your wide shot automatically while maintaining full ship speed.

December 4, 2025

Version 0.8.4 Released

This update brings Ship Color Customization to the game, two new throwable objects, and improvements to the throwing mechanics to allow even more chain reactions!

November 25, 2025

This update brings: Chain Reaction Throws deal area damage and stun other enemies, the new Plasma Bomb, Gunboat and improvements to performance and stage layouts. This build uses the Web 2023 Assembly Build package which should improve performance on browsers (particularly Edge).

October 30, 2025

Version 0.8.2a Released

A number of players had issues with input and performance which should be addressed with this patch. Also this update brings Latched Auto-Fire, A new Railgun, and WASD/Arrow key control scheme prompt at first startup for convenience. Notable New & Requested Features - Grappling Hook improvement - enemies which cannot be grabbed by the grappling hook now take damage when hit by it. This also allows for the Grappling Hook to blast right through destroyed enemies, and gives the player ability to do damage to the rear situationally. Quite a game changer! - New Railgun Attachable weapon - unleash utter destruction with this highly limited but extremely powerful weapon - New enemy - Wildfire - this aggressive enemy floats onto the screen and fires so wildly that its recoil pushes it back, swaying in a side arc while it fires. This enemy has been added to key areas increasing tension in some sections which needed a bit more intensity. - New enemy - Eye Floater - these creepy little eyes are hanging out just watching your every move. Look out for their forked laser attack after their eye flashes. - Hard mode does not provide the player any health - one hit kills. No Health Pickups. - Spitfire Cruisers now spray bullets in a wider arc, firing spreads that are 5 bullets wide. - Interceptor enemy routing behaviors improved, which should prevent situations where they were turning off screen too early. - An on-screen Turn Signal has been added to show players when a turn in the stage is about to happen. These are displayed on the right edge of the screen pointing up or down. - Keyboard controls (WASD vs Arrow control prompt). When the player first starts the game they receive a one-time prompt to choose between WASD+JKL; for controls or Arrows+ZXCV for keyboard controls. Additionally any remapped control for Movement, Action button and Bomb also remap the UI controls keeping everything consistent. - Auto-Fire now has a latch mode which is the default behavior. Tapping the V/; Key toggles the Auto Fire on and off instead of having to hold it down. There are still strategic situations where timed fire using hold-down rapid-fire is preferred by some players so the option in the Controls panel offers players their preference. Technical Improvements and Bug Fixes - An issue with Turrets allowing them to turn beyond their intended deadzone has been corrected. - Additional input issues fixed - Space key was hard-mapped to bomb which was causing issues if players remapped Space to other actions. This hard-mapped configuration has been removed. This was also the case for the right Control key. - Multiple control issues resolved - some users, particularly in the web version had issues with controls not being registered such as the held button for Focus Shot not working. Input has now been reworked with a fallback check mechanism to poll Input whenever frames are skipped, providing more consistent input when the system is catching up. - Performance improvements - Cosmic Destroyer uses a deterministic tick system. This means logic shouldn't deviate even if the performance degrades, but there were improvements to be made within this system for lower-end hardware that was consistently dropping frames. Memory management of the Tick system has improved performance on these lower end machines by 20-25% in some cases, so I hope this resolves many player's lag issues. - Multiple Graphical improvements have been made with significant GPU performance improvement related to full-screen effects for parallaxing (particularly related to the simulated 3D effect).

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