Each player gets half the screen. One of you can hold the line in orbit while the other descends to light a world — or swap whenever you like.
Player one · Solar
Player two · Tidal
No gamepads detected. Press any button on a controller to connect it.
Up to four players, each on their own screen
Play online
One of you hosts: your game runs the galaxy, and up to three friends join with your room code. Everyone plays full screen on their own device, with keyboard and mouse, touch or a controller.
Host a game
Open a room and share its code. Then start any game from the title; friends play alongside you.
Room code
Join a game
Type the code your host shared.
Online
The game carries on
You're playing in a friend's game, so it doesn't pause for you. Your ship waits where you left it, and enemies can still find it.
Star chart
Campaign+ · You are the darkness — snuff out the living light
Briefing
Awakening
Game paused
Paused
Victory
System relit
Choose one upgrade for the team
Defeat
The star went dark
Settings
Controls
Click a key to change it, then press the new key. Esc cancels · Delete clears the slot. A key already used by another action swaps places with it.
Keyboard
The mouse stays as it is: left click fires, double-click and hold charges, right click thrusts toward the cursor.
Gamepad
Move with the right stick, aim with the left.
Click a slot, then press a button on your controller. The left stick moves and the right stick aims (unless swapped). Aim assist, deadzone and vibration are in Settings.
Touchscreen
Move on the right, aim on the left, buttons on the left.
Phone: a slimmer HUD, smaller buttons and fewer things on screen at once. Automatic uses it on phones.
On phones and tablets: touch the move side for a stick where your thumb lands; push the aim stick to aim and fire. Buttons: Charge and Boost (hold), Leap, Shield, E, Time (hold, from stage 2), and II to pause.
Preferences
Settings
Profile and play
Each player's lives for one system. Adjust for playtesting.
Space eases into slow time while nobody is in orbit — less the stronger you are. Recommended for solo play.
Sound
Voice chat (online)
Talk with friends in an online game. Your browser asks to use the microphone the first time. V mutes and unmutes you.
Turns what you say into text, for friends who read subtitles. Your browser's speech service does the listening.
What everyone says, as text on the left of the screen.
Display and accessibility
Detail of worlds, clouds and glow. Lower this if the game stutters.
Sharp worlds, bloom and a deeper starfield, drawn on your graphics card.
A soft glow around bright light. Needs graphics card rendering.
1–5 stage · 6 final battle · 7 nebula · 8 black hole · 9 Devourer · 0 Sandbox
When the frame rate dips, lowers detail, then resolution, until it recovers.
Drifty: build up speed and coast. Responsive: instant, like before.
Phone vibration and controller rumble when you are hit.
Controllers
Light against Dark
Rivals
One binary system: the Prime Star and the Hollow Star circle each other, and five worlds circle them both. Fly into a world's light to transform it for your side, hold worlds to score, and fight off your rivals with fourteen kinds of power-up. Your star heals you; the rival star burns you.
Bots fill the empty seats. Online, friends who join later take over a bot.
With more than one of you: rivals, or one side together against the bots.
First side to the score wins, or the side ahead when time runs out.
Rivals
The Light wins
Settings
Opening story
The words of the opening. Each line shows over its own scene; leave a line empty to let that scene play without words. Long lines wrap. Your version is saved on this device, and friends you host online see it too.
0:01–0:07 · the Prime Star and its worlds
0:09–0:15 · the Darklight drifts in
0:16–0:22 · it coils around the Prime Star
0:24–0:29 · the galaxy goes dark
0:30–0:36 · one small light rises
0:31–0:36 · the title card
under the title
Relic claimed
Relic
Everything you carry
NOSMIC
A Game By Brian Woodruff
Your journey
Records
Challenge
Modifiers
Make runs harder for a bigger score multiplier. Active modifiers apply to every mode.
Field guide
How to play
The Prime Star has been corrupted by the living dark — the dark energy of the universe, now loose in conventional space, infecting any matter it touches. It seeks to spread across the universe unless it is stopped by the living light. In response, impossible light has manifested to defeat it. You are that light. Every infected world is wrapped in a shell of dark energy: descend and stand by its beacons until they light — light them all and the world becomes radiant, raising the system's illumination and healing its star. Keep the star alive the whole time.
Keyboard and mouse
W A S D
Fly or walk
Mouse
Aim, hold left button to fire
E
Descend or ascend — into worlds and onto stars. Lighting is automatic: stay close to a beacon or node
Space
Leap forward (4 s cooldown)
F
Hold to raise your shield — it drains your life while it is up
Space ×2
Double-tap and hold to slow time (from stage 2): enemies and their shots crawl inside a field around you for as long as you hold. The first tap leaps
Right mouse
Hold to thrust toward the cursor (Shift still boosts)
Left mouse ×2
Click, then click again quickly and hold to charge a blast; release to fire. Lost if you're hit or enter darkness
Shift
Boost (uses a little life)
Esc
Pause
Keyboard, second player
Arrows
Fly or walk
/ or Num 0
Fire at the nearest enemy
Enter
Descend or ascend
Right Shift
Leap
Right Ctrl
Shield
'
Hold to charge a blast
.
Boost
;
Hold to slow time (or double-tap and hold Right Shift)
Gamepad
Left stick
Fly or walk
Right stick
Aim and fire (or hold RT)
A
Descend or ascend
B
Leap
X
Shield
RB
Hold to charge a blast
LB
Boost
LT
Hold to slow time (or double-tap and hold B)
Start
Pause
Touch
Left thumb
Touch anywhere on the left half to fly or walk
Right thumb
Push to aim — it fires while pushed
Buttons
Charge and Boost (hold), Leap, Shield, E to descend or lift off, Time (hold, from stage 2 — or double-tap and hold Leap), II to pause
Phones
On a phone the game uses a slimmer layout: your life top-left, tips at the top, prompts between your thumbs, and the buttons top-right with cooldown rings — E lights up when there's something to press it for. Settings → Controls → Layout switches it (Automatic, Phone or Full)
Energy and the star
Orbit
Heal near the star — the closer you fly inside its gold ring, the faster you heal, and your shots cost nothing there. Radiant worlds heal you as you pass close
Beacons
Standing by a lit beacon heals you, even on a world's night side
Surface
In the light you regenerate life; facing the void on the night side, life slowly drains
Star life
A weakened star restores you less everywhere. Radiant worlds heal it. Each time you are destroyed, the star rebuilds you — and permanently loses 20% of its life
Surface foes
Only appear while someone is on that world — except raiders, which dive in from orbit and drain beacons
Shield
Hold the shield button to keep it up — it drains your life while it is up (half as fast in the final battle). At a fifth of your life it drops and locks (crossed-out icon) until you are back above half. While your life bar flashes — on a star, or full and still healing — raising the shield overloads it: let go when you see “overload imminent”, or it shatters and must regenerate
Rifts
Dark energy portals open in space and pour out a wave of enemies. While a rift is open you cannot land on worlds or dive onto stars, nothing else arrives and the system can't be finished. Defeat the wave — or destroy every portal to end it early
Enemies
While anyone is in space, enemies go for your star. When everyone is down on worlds they leave the star alone and chase you there instead
Your star
Your life is bound to your star: when it is wounded you feel it, and when you are hurt it suffers too. Wherever you are, you are warned when it is under attack — that is why time runs slower in space while you are on a world, a star, in a belt or a nebula
Nebulae
One system on each path has no star — a vast nebula fills its centre (the top bar shows the nebula's life), and its worlds are still thin discs of dust and rock on their future orbits. Fly into the glowing core and press E for a hard run to the nebula's heart, then press E again to ignite it: the nebula becomes the system's star, the discs condense into worlds, and you are fully recharged
Cosmic time
While everyone is away from orbit, space eases into slow time (and back out when someone returns) — less the stronger you are. The clock under the top bar shows how fast space runs compared with you
Time wells
Deep in the gravity of a black hole, a quasar, a magnetar or pulsar, a white dwarf, a gas giant or any world, dark things slow down — enemies and their shots. Your shots never do. You slow a little too, less as you grow stronger. Dashed rings show where time runs at ×0.8 and ×0.6
Slow time
From stage 2: double-tap and hold Space (hold LT on a gamepad, or the Time button on touch) to open a field around you where enemies and their shots crawl. It draws on its own meter (the Time icon), which refills — twice as fast in the light — and the field grows with your power. In tunnel runs it slows the run itself
Gravity
Worlds and moons pull your ship when you fly close — gas giants hardest, small moons gently — and catch you in a gentle orbit if you let go. Press E to enter the atmosphere, or steer away to leave; the pull never hurts you, and boosting out of it costs no life. Faint rings show the pull
Altitude
Early on you fly low: a close horizon, you must get right up to beacons, many weak enemies block your way, and the system's time slows hard while you're down. As you grow stronger (deeper systems, relics, Helion powers) you rise: you see the whole world, light beacons from afar, and become attuned to cosmic time
Flares
Gold solar flares heal you and burn your foes — fly into their path, or stand on a world's day side when one arrives. From the third system, violet dark flares appear and the stars look infected; past the halfway point the solar flares stop and only dark flares remain, rarer but deadly: get to the night side. Magnetar, pulsar and quasar beams act as their system's dark flares
Weather
Every world has weather — rain, snow, dust storms, ash, lightning, acid fog or crystal glints — that cycles from calm to storm, gathered around you rather than across the whole view. You fly above more of it as you rise
Leaving
Once you land, you can only lift off from a lit beacon (press E on it). In a black hole's system every world also has a cyan launch point that always works
Pursuit
A mini-boss near you when you descend will follow you down — onto worlds, stars and halos — and you can't leave until it's defeated
Lives
Each player has a set number of lives per system (see Settings). Lose one on a world or a star and you're rebuilt on it (a star's safe zone, a world's nearest lit beacon — on the day side when there is one) while the world waits for you — and if a mini-boss holds that world, losing a life to it frees you to lift off; anywhere else, and in tunnel runs, beside the star, on its quietest side. Out of lives, you're out until the next system
Worlds and moons
Features
Every world and moon has a feature of its own, named under it. You can always see it; once the world is lit it works for you (in Rivals, for the side that holds it)
Worlds
Rings break up enemy fire. A Great storm's lightning strikes your foes. Auroras heal you. Fire mountains hurl lava at your foes. Ice geysers slow your foes. Dust storms slow enemy fire to a crawl. Prism spires split your shots in three. Acid haze eats away at your foes
Moons
A Bright crater's moonlight heals you. An Ice plume slows your foes. A Fire moon's sulfur burns your foes. Some moons are tumbling captured rocks, and some circle their world the wrong way
Motion
Worlds turn on tilted axes as they circle their star, moons circle their worlds, and each leaves a faint wake along its orbit
Dark blooms
The Darklight takes root beside unlit worlds: a bulb of dark petals on a vein that runs down to the world. Shoot it to burn it away, or light its world to purge every bloom on it. New ones sprout while worlds stay dark; from the second stage they spit a slow dark spore at anyone close
Light and dark
Light is gold and white: you, your bolts, the stars' wind. The dark's fire is a black heart in a rose rim, and its great ones burn the same way — as the Void Sovereign weakens, gold light cracks through it. A world still dark sits in a shell of smoke that cracks with gold as you light its beacons, until it breaks open. The HUD speaks the same way: your life and your star are ribbons of light, and the dark's great ones have bars of darkness edged in fire. Tendrils at a system's edge and rifts in the sky show how far the Darklight has spread
The pull
Fly close and let go: the world catches you in a gentle orbit and carries you with it. Press E to enter its atmosphere, or steer away to leave. The pull never hurts you, and boosting out of it costs no life
Asteroid belts
Belt run
Crossing a belt puts you in a straight-on run: steer up, down, left and right, and shoot rocks in the way
One hit
Any hit throws you back out where you came in
Saves
Space leaps you forward through the field; a shield that lasts a rock's whole pass also saves you
Track
The belt curves and pushes you sideways. Each belt has one character — rubble, icy, ore-rich, volatile, tangled or infested — with its own obstacles. Hollow asteroids must be flown through their hole. Fly through gold rings for a bonus. In the final battle, the debris ring and the rings bursting from the sun are belts too
After
Once through, you can fly over that belt freely. Enemies must thread through it, and the rocks destroy some of them
Rivals
Sides
Light flies for the Prime Star, Dark for the Hollow Star. Online, in split screen, or with bots filling the empty seats
Worlds
Fly into a world's light (the ring around it) to transform it for your side. Rivals in the same light stop it. A world you hold scores for your side every second, heals you, and fires on rivals in its light
Stars
Your star heals you and rebuilds you when you're knocked out. The rival star burns you
Power-ups
Rapid fire, Spread shot, Overdrive, Seeker rounds, Siphon, Afterburner, Cloak, Claim surge, Aegis, Star mines, EMP, Nova, Repair and Star flare. Worlds you hold seed more of them
Winning
First side to the target score wins, or the side ahead when time runs out. Knockouts and taking worlds score too
Hunters
Hunting packs
From stage 2, stalkers led by an alpha (gold mane) travel in a V, circle you, then strike one after another — a red line flashes before each lunge. While you are on a world they circle it, waiting. Kill the alpha and the pack falters
Champions
From stage 2, some foes arrive as named champions: tougher, worth more, and with one power — Shielded (a recharging shield), Swift (faster time), Vampiric (drains you up close), Volatile (explodes after death), Splitting (splits in two), Regenerating (heals when not hit) or Phasing (can't be hurt while phased)
Tactics
Enemies spread out, nimble ones sidestep your shots (more often deeper in), shooters aim where you are heading, the wounded fall back once to regroup, drifters and crawlers coil before they lunge, and on the ground they come at you from several sides while spitters keep their distance
Mini-bosses
Leviathan
Destroy half its segments to crack the head's armour
Bastion
Fire through the gap in its turning shield
Twin Wraiths
Kill both within 5 seconds, and avoid their beam
Warden
Rises on a half-lit world; destroy its obelisks first. Each kind of world has its own Warden, in its own body, with its own way to fight and its own relic
Devourer
Once per campaign, just before the Hollow Sun, a star-eater arrives and swallows your star — its light is gone and its life drains. Its hide swallows gunfire: fly into its mouth, survive its throat, and break the membrane to free your star
Rule
The system can't be relit while any mini-boss lives. If you leave a world while a mini-boss is there, it follows you up — even a Warden rises into orbit
Escalation
Each kind returns stronger every time you beat it — a new title, more life and new tricks — so no two are ever the same. Difficulty sets how many can appear in a system (Chill: 1, Default: up to 2, Intense: up to 3)
Stellar phenomena
Many stars
Binary and trinary systems share one star-life pool; each star has its own healing ring
Flares
A star aims, then fires a wave. On the ground, hide on the night side
Magnetar
Sweeping beams, and a pulse that jams weapons
Quasar
Jets that switch on in cycles, and strong gravity
Black hole
A wide outer ring that heals you safely, an inner halo (dashed) that heals twice as fast, and a pull toward the horizon. Dive into the halo to gather light; in a lone black hole's system, your life is your light: steer into a dark world's atmosphere to give it your life and light its beacons (let go and you simply orbit it) — the halo's reserve replaces star life
Pulsar, Wolf-Rayet
Whipping beams; a wind that pushes everything outward
On a star
Dive
Fly close to most stars and press E. Energy floods in, but radiation drains your life outside the corona
Star foes
Dark solar manifestations live only on stars: flarewisps, umbrae (growing dark sunspots) and coronal eyes. Enemies that chase you onto a star burn in its light
Corona
Small stars have pockets, others a turning chain or a sweeping band. Inside you're protected and your shield recharges fast
Passages
Rare — and rarer the deeper you go. Stand in one on a star to enter a hyperspace run: survive it without a single hit and the far world is completely converted to light. One mistake throws you back to the star — and the passage closes
Corrupted Helions
Rare dark Helions on stars fire volleys of dark bolts and send out rings of dark energy. One that catches you (unshielded) throws you off and seals the star behind a dark force field — spread the light to the other worlds to save it. Shoot them down first
Helions
Rare, fast creatures. Catch one for a power — like Radiant Reach, which awakens worlds from orbit when you steer into them
Campaign route
Star chart
A galaxy of four spiral arms around the core. Clearing a system opens the ones linked to it — and lets the void consume another, closing paths to the core (never below one)
Chart gates
Very rare — about one star dive in thirty reveals one. Stand in it to leave a system unfinished and return to an earlier one or cross to another arm
Relics
Mini-bosses drop permanent boosts and their own ability; each ability also weakens the Hollow Sun
Upgrades
Choose one team upgrade after each clear; your route is saved
Final stage
The Hollow Sun chains five dark stars, each possessed by a Dark Energy Deity. Dive onto one and relight its three cores — each core burns its deity — to convert the star, then shoot it into the Hollow Sun; the impact wounds it. Defeat the Hollow Sun and the Prime Star returns. Each impact sends out an asteroid wave you must fly through. Its light burns through the gaps in its debris ring — keep to the debris' shadow
Deities
The Hunger drags you toward its maw (shoot into the open maw) and lunges down a line it marks. The Unlit puts out the light and blinks to your side. The Drowned Choir sings rings with gaps to slip through. The Hollow King — a crown afloat over a face of eyes — is guarded by knights that halve the damage it takes until they fall. The Last Dark leaves only a ring of light round it to stand in
New threats
Deeper stages add new enemies in orbit and on the ground; the star map lists them
City worlds
Ecumenopolis
From stage 3, some worlds are one city from pole to pole. Instead of landing you dive into a trench run through its canyons
Turning
At each crossing, steer toward an opening to turn there; keep central to go straight on. Gold chevrons along the floor lead into the opening on the shortest way to a vent still burning, and a gold arrow stands at it; where the canyon bends, a board on the wall points the way round. The line under your ship says which way you are about to go. The map in the corner shows the canyons and the vents
Vents
Fly low over a darklight vent and fire into it — shots dive onto a vent once you are lined up, and a vent behind your ship shows through it. Each one lights one of the city's four beacons and shines up as a pillar of gold; when all are out the city wakes and you rise up out of its canyons
Dangers
Fly over or under girders, round pylons and through the gold window in energy gates — a gold frame shows the way through whatever is in your path; shoot the turrets and drones that fire at you — they glow as they charge a shot, and a red ring round your ship means one is on its way to where you are, so move. The rooftops are a killing ground: the dark's fire bursts over them, so stay in the canyons. Space surges you forward through anything. E pulls up at any time, and the vents you burned stay out
NOSMIC 2026v96 — what's new: the trench run refined (canyons that fill the view and open at crossings, shots you can see coming, rising out in gold when a city wakes), a clearer trench run through the city canyons (gold arrows to the vents, fewer blockades, fire over the rooftops), a game-stopping flare fixed, a way out of a losing mini-boss fight, a safer place to be rebuilt in orbit, the phone layout's HUD in light and dark, rebuilt in the light, all of the HUD in light and dark, smoother busy moments, worlds in shells of smoke that crack with light, rebuilt on the world or star where you fell, bolts of light you can see, bosses of the dark (a burning Void Sovereign, wisps for the Twin Wraiths, a glowing Devourer) and Wardens you can see again, dark-bodied enemies, glowing pickups, rings and nodes, you as a creature of light, bolts of light against dark fire, a deeper sky, a solar wind, and the Darklight from the first system (rifts in the sky, tendrils at the edge, dark blooms beside unlit worlds), a phone layout and a mobile edition (a slimmer HUD, smaller touch buttons with cooldown rings, menus that fit a phone held sideways), a feature for every world and moon (rings, storms, auroras, fire mountains, ice geysers, dust storms, prism spires, acid haze and five kinds of moon), worlds that turn as they circle their star and moons that circle their worlds, a pull that catches you in orbit instead of dropping you (press E to enter the atmosphere), Rivals (Light against Dark online, in split screen or with bots, with fourteen power-ups), bolder tunnel effects spaced further apart, your own words for the opening (Settings → Opening story), Slow time on a double-tap and hold of Space, an eldritch Hollow King, new maws for the Hunger and the Devourer, smoother and redrawn tunnel runs, five final bosses that each fight their own way, a body of its own for every Warden, ecumenopolis worlds with trench runs, the first signs of the Darklight, organic black holes, quasars, flares and jets, orbits that never overlap, living stars with boiling surfaces, flowing coronas and prominences, more organic cutscenes, smoother online play with shared screens and ready checks, seven Wardens with their own relics, new boss looks, an opening and a new finale, voice chat with speech-to-text subtitles, a Full screen button, online co-op (up to four players, each on their own screen), truer lighting on worlds, stars with a soft boiling surface, crisper gas giants and coastlines, smooth distant worlds and gentler bloom.
Turn your phone sideways
NOSMIC plays in landscape. The game is paused until you rotate.