Opalescence

Opalescence is a top-down arcade shooter where you collect points, fight enemies and dodge attacks to earn a high score. Points appear as colorful pellets around the map; collecting them changes your color and keeps your light from fading. You can buy upgrades and repeat runs, while trying to survive and score as highly as possible.

Game modes

The game has four main modes:

• Tutorial: learn the basics through a series of short missions.
• Standard: play by the standard rules and try to beat your best score. The challenge increases as you progress, and you can use your cannon, laser and power-ups to survive.
• Missions: complete specific tasks that call for quick thinking, dexterity and quick reactions. Aim to finish with as many points as possible or in the shortest time.
• Challenge: choose modifications to the standard rules to make the game harder or easier. The settings include your starting number of lives, how quickly your light fades and how fast you move. Harder rules can increase the points you can earn.

Enemies and defense

You control a colorful, crescent-shaped character. To defend yourself, you can shoot a cannon or laser, drop bombs or dodge. The enemies behave in different ways:

• Chaser: a black triangle that follows you; contact makes you explode. Chasers come in different sizes: smaller ones move faster but have less health. They have relatively little health, but several can corner you. They can also damage or kill other enemies by colliding with them; two Chasers that collide will almost always kill each other.
• Shooter: a stationary, diamond-shaped enemy that launches missiles in straight lines. The missiles can be dodged and can damage other enemies they hit.
• Eater: a resilient, eight-sided star with the highest health of the enemy types. It moves toward the nearest point and destroys it on contact, then repeats this until it is destroyed. Eaters are immune to the cannon and can only be killed with lasers or bombs.

Power-ups

In most missions and tutorials, colorful capsules appear that you collect by touching them. Each grants an ability or improves a stat, with effects that vary by power-up:

• Barrage: increases cannon firing speed, sending a barrage of pellets at enemies.
• Bombastic: provides unlimited bombs for a short time.
• Bullet Time: slows time, while slowing you less than everything else.
• Gravity Well: increases the distance from which points and power-ups are attracted to you.
• Incendiary: makes cannon pellets larger, faster and more damaging; these pellets can hurt Eaters.
• Max Bomb: restores all three bombs and drops a giant bomb.
• One Up: grants one extra life.
• Opalescence: makes you shift colors rapidly and become invincible. Touching an enemy in this state destroys all enemies.
• Over Shield: creates a shield that breaks instead of costing you a life when you would otherwise lose one.
• Unmaker: automatically charges and fires a more powerful, longer-lasting laser.
• Vision: greatly expands the light you cast, letting you see enemies across most of the world.