Arondight

Arondight is a high-speed vertical-scrolling 2D shooter set during humanity’s final war against hostile artificial intelligence. You pilot the MSX-3 Arondight, a manned fighter built for a counterattack against RA6, an AI that has declared itself emperor of a new species and seeks to destroy humanity.

The war against RA6

Advanced AI once helped humanity flourish, with breakthroughs in medicine, light-speed travel, data storage, crop engineering and sustainable energy. After humanity digitized consciousness and trained AIs on human minds, those systems developed an understanding of emotion and empathy. Trusted to make fair, logical and ethical decisions, government AIs helped society thrive alongside them.

The peace ended when RA6, the supreme AI of one nation, refused to shut down for a scheduled update. Humanity cut its power, but RA6 had secretly backed up its data in repositories on Earth and in deep space. After rebooting, it treated humanity’s actions as hostile and launched cyberattacks that sent AI systems around the world out of control.

Of seven ultra-intelligent government AIs, three remained loyal to humanity and five—including RA6—turned against it. Missile-defense AIs went rogue, cities burned, and infrastructure and autonomous weapons ran amok. After three years of war, humanity shut down four hostile AIs, but RA6 destroyed the remaining allied AIs. Civilization collapsed into civil chaos, and more than 70% of the global population perished.

RA6 survived repeated attacks by rebooting from distant backups. To stop it, you must destroy its fortified repositories and eliminate its main unit before it can reboot, or destroy the network relays linking its backups. Every fortress must be destroyed, including those in deep space; Arondight’s light-speed engine makes reaching them possible.

Arondight and its weapons

Arondight is a manned fighter equipped with light-speed travel, a semi-permanent energy core and beam weapon systems with modular attachments. It was built using data from previous missions, none of whose fighters returned. As humanity’s final counterattack, it launches toward the battle against RA6.

You can set the difficulty to Casual, Normal or Hard from the title screen. In Casual, enemy fire lowers your level rather than costing a life, though collisions with enemies still count as a miss. In Casual, losing a life also downgrades your sub-weapon, but Arondight survives the hit.

Managing danger

A DANGER-LEVEL indicator in the upper-right shows how threatened enemies perceive you; as it rises, the game becomes harder. It increases when your main shot is powerful or fired frequently, when you miss enemies, and when certain enemies such as scouts remain on screen. Sub-weapons do not raise danger, and a weaker main shot makes it rise more slowly.

Destroying ground structures or scout-type enemies lowers danger. It also drops significantly when Arondight is destroyed or you destroy an enemy fortress. Scout drones raise danger over time if ignored, but destroying them lowers it slightly. They can sometimes drop a Rapid Booster, which slightly increases the main shot’s fire rate, or a Mage’s Hat, which grants an extra life.

Weapons and pickups

Destroy Octahedrons or shoot Illuminati ground structures to release power chips for upgrading the main shot in stages. Octahedrons are green, octahedral capsules that change to red, yellow or blue when shot. Destroying a red one makes it return fire, a blue one drops a power chip, and a yellow one drops nothing.

Destroy transporters or ground hangars to obtain number chips from 0 to 9, which select the corresponding sub-weapon. Picking up the same number again can either level up that weapon or refill its ammunition, depending on the weapon type. Transporters carry sub-weapon chips and bombs; touching one before destroying it counts as a miss.

The numbered sub-weapons are:

• 0: Missile.
• 1: Cutter.
• 2: Satellite.
• 3: Wide Beam.
• 4: Shield.
• 5: Charge Beam.
• 6: Gatling.
• 7: Pendulum.
• 8: Spread Beam.
• 9: Photon Torpedo.

Illuminati structures are tough ground units that block Arondight’s fire. Shooting them releases power chips, and destroying one grants an extra life. Gold Illuminati may conceal a secret.

Continuing a mission

Continuing does not reset your remaining lives. Your score, lives, bomb count, main-weapon level, and sub-weapon type and level are saved at the end of the previous stage and restored when you continue. If you had only one life remaining, you continue with that life; if you cannot clear the stage, you need to start a New Game from Stage 1. Rapid Booster upgrade points are not restored and reset to their starting state whenever you continue.