How to Play

01

Your first flight

Use a desktop browser and a keyboard. Open Play, pick a ship with Change Ship, and launch. You fly under your LarkSpark name, and no account is required.

Learn to steer before you chase anyone. Hold W or Up to thrust, then let go and watch the ship keep moving. A and D, or Left and Right, rotate the ship; they do not move it sideways. S or Down applies reverse thrust relative to where the ship is facing.

Practice in open space: accelerate, release thrust, turn around, and thrust against your old direction of travel. Turning alone does not reverse your course, so leave room before entering narrow passages.

02

Survive your first fight

Your energy bar is both your health and your weapon budget. Firing nonstop leaves less energy to survive a hit, so fire short bursts with Space or Ctrl, then let energy recover before the next pass.

Tab fires the cannon and the backtick key deploys a mine. Try each one on its own to see its effect and energy cost. A mine stays where you drop it, so aim for where a pilot is going, not where they are.

Hold Shift for afterburner when you need to reposition, and release it once you have space. Afterburner also burns energy. If energy keeps falling after you stop shooting, check whether you are still boosting or running another ability.

03

Choose when to collect and when to fight

Collecting Xenite builds your ship while you learn the arena. Approach a pickup with an exit in mind: an orb in a busy corridor may cost more energy than it is worth. If someone is already firing down that corridor, circle around.

When hunting, do not sit directly behind an opponent for the whole chase. Watch their direction of travel and aim ahead of it. If shots keep missing, stop firing and change your angle. Saving energy for the next encounter beats filling empty space with bullets.

04

Core mechanics

Energy: your ship starts with 1,600 energy that slowly recharges. Energy is your health, your ammunition, and the power for every ability. At zero your ship explodes and you return to the launch screen with base stats.

Upgrades: collecting Xenite upgrades your weapon levels, maximum energy, recharge rate, speed, and handling. Dying costs some of those upgrades, so survival matters.

Physics: ships keep moving until you counter-thrust. Positioning, momentum, and timing decide fights more than raw firepower.

05

Deathmatch for Xenite

The arena is a free-for-all deathmatch. Climb the leaderboard by holding the most Xenite, collected from the field or taken from other pilots.

A destroyed ship drops its Xenite. Pick it up fast, or someone else will. Green Xenite carries upgrades such as more energy, faster recharge, and stronger weapons, so it is always worth the detour.

06

Help and connection

Press F1 during play to open the controls reference and volume settings. Home toggles stealth and Shift + Home toggles cloak; an ability or item has to be available to your ship before its key does anything.

The game needs JavaScript and a live connection to the game server. If the page loads but the arena does not connect, reload the page first. If it still fails, contact us with your browser, device, the time it happened, and any error message.