Cinderwing
The red Cinder fighter below a violet crystal warship, a banded gas giant behind them

One ship. It grows on what it kills. A swarm without end.

A portrait, vertically scrolling roguelite shmup. Survive five minutes, build an arsenal from level-up cards, beat the boss, and spend your scrap in the Hangar for the next run.

Join the Android beta What is it?
Free to join. Android, 64-bit (arm64) devices.

The game

Survive. Level. Build.

Your weapons fire on their own. You fly: weave through the bullets with a drag of your thumb, pick up the crystals your kills drop, and choose a card every time you level up. At five minutes the boss arrives. Win or get shot down, you keep the scrap.

7

Stages, 7 bosses

Forest, shore, sea, a volcanic foundry, a storm-lashed city, a glass desert and the Void. Every boss has its own parts to shoot off and its own phases, and every stage has a mini-boss of its own.

14

Weapons, each with an ultimate

Vulcan, Spread Shot, Seeker Missiles, Orbit Blades, Pulse Nova, Lance Laser and more. Take one to level 6 and it becomes its ultimate form. Fill four weapon and four passive slots from ten passives.

8

Ships to unlock

Cinder, Scatterhawk, Warden, Magpie, Lancer, Tempest, Bastion and Wraith. Each starts with its own weapon, its own bomb and its own strengths. Buy some with scrap; earn the rest by clearing stages and levelling up.

16

Upgrades for every ship

Spend the scrap from every run in the Hangar on permanent upgrades for each ship: hull, damage, armour, rerolls, a head start, a second chance and, once everything else is maxed, a second ultimate a run. Stages you clear add new weapons and passives to the pool.

6

Bonus levels

Between the stages: recon runs with your guns cold, a convoy to escort, a derelict station, a calibration run, and more.

4★

Ranks, then Endless

Every stage has four ranks, from Brigadier General to General, all five minutes long and each harder than the last. Clear a stage at four stars to open its Endless mode.

The route

  1. Whispering ForestBoss: Harrow Gunship
  2. Shattered ShoreBoss: Tidal Breaker
  3. Abyssal SeaBoss: Kraken Dreadnought
  4. IronworksBoss: Foundry Crawler
  5. StormfrontBoss: Tempest Array
  6. Glass DesertBoss: Scarab Dreadnought
  7. The VoidBoss: Mothership Vesper

Screenshots

From the cockpit

Built for one hand and a portrait screen. Scroll sideways for more.

  • Whispering Forest: the Harrow Gunship under fire above the trees
  • The Asteroid Belt spy run: no guns, just get through
  • Abyssal Sea: the Kraken Dreadnought among ice towers
  • Ironworks: a warning banner as the Foundry Crawler approaches over the lava field
  • The Convoy Escort: an elite closes in while all five transports are still flying
  • Stormfront: the Tempest Array fills the city sky with bullets
  • The Planet Breaker: towing the bomb down to the planet's equator
  • The Void: Mothership Vesper and its escort pods fire down through the swarm
Trailer still: Mothership Vesper and its escort pods fire down on the ship through a swarm

Trailer

Thirty seconds of it

Asteroid fields, foundries, a storm city, the desert and the Void, and the bosses waiting at the end of them.

The trailer opens on YouTube.

The story

Surrender, or be replaced

An alien warlord called Vesper has come to our solar system. His replicators build ships without end in a shipyard on Ostra, the gas giant next door. Anyone who can fly is scrambled to meet the swarm.

You fly Cinder, one of the few ships that take the cores out of what they kill and grow on them in the fight. After every sortie the hangar drops it back to baseline so it does not cook itself; what the engineers learn raises the baseline for the next one.

The story is told on the intercom, a line or two at a time, by the faces flying and fighting with her.

Rook: a rook in an orange flight suit, eyes a little too wide
Rook
Vesper: a grey-violet axolotl in a black greatcoat and peaked cap, with glowing magenta eyes
Vesper

On the intercom

  • RookCallsign Cinder. Orders come, she goes.
  • JunoVeteran pilot, a lynx. Calm, dry, kind. Takes Cinder on her wing.
  • MagsA badger who keeps the hangar flying. Calls Rook "kid". Worries about the ship.
  • Cmdr. VargaA bear. Gives the orders. Never wastes a word.
  • Capt. OduyaA capybara, captain of the carrier Long Patience. Speaks for the people getting out.
  • VesperThe warlord. Cold, brief, and certain he has already won.

Platforms

Where to play

Beta now

Android

Join the beta on Google Play. Needs a 64-bit (arm64) Android device. Plays fully offline.

Join the Android beta