LIVE WIRE

The city is dark and the swarm owns the streets. Pick tonight's job:

Clear a stage to unlock the next. Higher stages bring tougher enemies, escorted bosses and a bigger score multiplier, plus new gear: OVERDRIVE weapon tiers, Reactor Core and Orbital Strike.

• Leave the lit grid and you trail a live wire behind you.
• Get back to any lit block to close the circuit. Everything enclosed lights up and fries. Every circuit also sets off a shockwave that grows with the ground you enclose, and each enemy it fries explodes into its neighbours. Enclose 40 blocks or more for a full DISCHARGE. Level up to add weapons such as lasers, rockets and saws. The city is larger than the screen: the view follows you, the minimap (top right) shows the whole grid, and arrows point at the active substation, bosses and magnets. Map edges count as walls.
• Pink bugs hunt the drone. Touching them drains your hull and the board frame flashes red. Dark red brutes shrug off lit ground and black out every block they cross, and they march on a charging substation. Catching them in a circuit hurts them most. Later come green spitters that shoot from range, orange bombers that blow holes in your grid. Bosses lock on and lunge: dash out of the red line.
• Purple cutters never hurt the drone. They hunt your wire: a dotted line shows where one is heading, and the wire turns red while it chews. Close the circuit before the ring fills, or the wire snaps and shocks you.
• Blocks marked ? hide buildings. Light one to switch it on: gun towers shoot, repair bays heal you nearby, shield generators keep their area lit through boss attacks, tesla coils zap, slow fields halve enemy speed. Each one is labelled once found.
• A boss arrives every 50 seconds behind a WARNING. Each one wrecks lit ground in its own way, and only the hub, lit substations and shield generators hold against it. Lit blocks also flicker out slowly on their own.

Move with WASD or arrow keys, or drag anywhere on the board. From stage 2, Space or Shift dashes through danger (there is a DASH button on touch screens). P pauses, M mutes.