Pick the mode, then the ship. Every one of them is played on NORMAL, HARD or DIRE, and four of them keep a board of their own - the lab is the one that is never filed.

• SURVIVAL

  Waves until you fall. A boss every fifth, a card every wave. The game as it is.

• DEADLINE

  Three minutes. Lives are never lost - a hit only breaks your combo - so the only thing worth doing is killing faster.

• BOSS RUSH

  The bosses back to back with nothing in between, one card a fight, packs from the second.

• DAILY

  One seed a day. The same waves, the same floors and the same hands for everybody, and your first run of the day is the one that counts.

• BOSS LAB

  Any boss, any tier, on an empty floor, as many times as you like. The fight you keep dying to, on demand. Never filed.

Toggles you set beside the difficulty, for when you want the game to be less reasonable. Your run still files, tagged, so nobody thinks you took the easy line.

• HARDCORE

  One life. That is the whole rule.

• PURIST

  No cards. The ship exactly as it comes, for as long as that lasts.

• COMET STORM

  Comets from the first wave, three times as often.

• SWIFT

  Everything is thirty percent faster. Including the things behind you.

• ELITE FIELD

  Every arrival is an elite, and their affixes stack twice as fast.

• MAGAZINE

  The gun gets a magazine and a reload to manage, and brings the reload cards with it. On any difficulty, including NORMAL.

Same controls, four different games. Two of them do not have a gun.

• VECTOR — the interceptor

  Faster, with the dash back sooner. The one that rewards never being where the shot went.

• BASTION — the gunboat

  Heavier rounds, and a tenth slower for them - it trades speed for weight. With MAGAZINE on it carries half again as many.

• MOTHERSHIP — the carrier

  No gun at all - a wing of drones shoots whatever is nearest, and holding fire makes the whole wing focus what your crosshair is on. Unlocked by flying five drones at once on a ship that has a gun.

• BOOPER — the rammer

  No gun either. Fire is a BOOP: a lunge that rams everything on its line and sets off a pulse on the first thing it hits, with two shield charges for the touches in between.

Forty-six cards. Most are plain and good; thirteen only turn up once you hold the card that opens them, and a line card wears the name of its line, so you can see the plan coming.

• THE PLAIN ONES

  RAPID FIRE, SPLIT SHOT, PIERCING, RICOCHET, SEEKER ROUNDS, MARKSMAN, OVERCHARGE, SHRAPNEL, ORBITAL, AEGIS, VENGEANCE, EXTRA LIFE, and the rest of the shelf.

• HEAVY ROUNDS → BREACH

  Fatter rounds that hit harder, and then rounds that go through a BULWARK's plate and a BINDER's ring half again as fast.

• DRONE → FIRE LINK, HARD POINTS, DRONE BAY

  A wingman that shoots what you are not, then three cards that make standing near you a mistake.

• PLASMA BLADE → KEEN EDGE, LANCE STRIKE

  Dashing through an enemy destroys it. Follow the line and each blade kill buys the dash back sooner, and the dash starts cutting bosses.

• STORM → THUNDERHEAD, STATIC CHARGE

  Lightning between whatever is close, and then a version of it that goes hunting the boss.

• CRYO ROUNDS → SHATTER, PERMAFROST

  Chill what you hit, hit chilled things much harder, and let the chill jump from anything that dies of it.

• LASER → FOCUS LENS, PRISM SPLIT, CAUTERIZE

  A beam instead of rounds - then longer, hotter, doubled, and leaving things burning behind it.

• THE BOOPER'S SIX

  RAM PLATING, KINETIC RECHARGE, BATTERING RAM, WRECKING BALL, REBOUND and SHOCK PULSE are dealt to the rammer and to nobody else.

• TWO RE-ROLLS

  You get two a run. Spend them early and the deep drafts are whatever the deck feels like.

A tree of permanent passives in four branches, bought with the points achievements pay. Earn every achievement and you can buy every rank exactly, with nothing left over.

• SHIP

  HULL PLATING, THRUSTERS, SECOND WIND - lives, speed, and the first life you lose each run coming back.

• GUN

  CALIBRE, ESCORT, OPENING HAND - damage from everything you own, a drone on any ship, and a card before wave one.

• LUCK

  SALVAGE, TRACTOR, MULLIGAN - more drops, pulled from further away, and another re-roll.

• SHIPS

  SLIPSTREAM, SIEGE PLATING, HANGAR DECK, HEAVY BUMPER - one node a ship, and every one is a trade. The interceptor buys speed with damage, the gunboat damage with speed, the carrier another drone with rate of fire, the rammer a harder BOOP with a longer wait for it.

Seventeen goals on a board of their own, in three columns, each saying what it pays. They are the only thing that fills the talent tree, so the list is what the game still wants from you.

• PROGRESS

  FIRST BLOOD, DOUBLE DIGITS, THE LONG HAUL, PACK HUNTER, FLIGHT DECK, NO MERCY - and WING COMMANDER, which is the one that opens the MOTHERSHIP.

• MUTATORS

  ONE LIFE, AS SHE COMES, WEATHER EYE, RED SHIFT, EVERY ONE OF THEM, COUNTING ROUNDS. Asking for a harder game should pay for something.

• RESTRAINT

  UNTOUCHED, IRON SIGHTS, SKELETON CREW, BILLIARDS - the ones you only get by choosing the harder line on purpose. Ten waves on the VECTOR without a scratch is worth four; your first boss is worth one.

One at the end of every fifth wave, in packs of two from wave ten, each with three phases that get worse as its health goes. The wave carries on around the fight.

• WARDEN

  The zoner. Rings with one lit lane to stand in, and a cage it drops round you while you are looking for it.

• LANCE

  Charges, and puts a ring down in the space it has just cleared. The only one whose moves combine.

• CHORUS

  Sweeps the floor, then fills the cage it made with company.

• PRISM

  Beams. It never cages you, because the beams are the walls, and the sweep comes round from behind.

• HIVE

  The slowest and the fattest, with the fewest moves of its own: it hatches wasps and lets them do the work.