White Dwarf

White Dwarf is a top-down survival shooter about keeping a small, dense stellar remnant alive in an arena that fills with rocks and enemies. Your weapon automatically fires at the nearest target, leaving you to control your position and decide when to use your cooldown abilities. The longer you survive, the more crowded the field becomes.

Survive the waves

The first wave brings a few slow rocks. Faster enemies arrive after 30 seconds, and enemies that shoot back appear after a minute. Later foes may withstand damage until you strip away their armor, or split into smaller enemies when defeated. New types arrive on their own timers and add to the existing enemy pool rather than replacing it, gradually turning the open arena into a maze of narrow gaps.

Every few waves, a boss enters the field. Each calls for a different response: some absorb attacks behind shields, some bombard you from a distance, some send in reinforcements, and others split into smaller versions as they take damage. Defeating a boss does not remove it from the run; a smaller version joins the regular enemy pool for every remaining wave, adding to the enemies you face later.

Choose your upgrades

Each level offers three upgrades. Some improve damage, fire rate, health, movement speed or pickup range. Others add an active ability on a cooldown, such as clearing nearby enemies, blinking through rocks or turning your kills into an explosion.

Taking the same upgrade five times evolves it into a named perk, which adds a permanent bonus on top of those upgrades. Focusing on one path pays off more than spreading upgrades across several. Some perks are not offered directly: advancing two specific upgrade paths far enough in the same run fuses them into a new effect, such as destructive movement, shots that change on impact or abilities that reduce one another’s cooldowns.

Use your abilities

Cooldown abilities can clear space and create a few seconds to move when you are boxed in, but using one too early may leave it unavailable when a more serious threat arrives. Upgrades can increase an ability’s area, shorten its cooldown or transform how it works.

Make lasting progress

Each run earns Stardust according to how far you get. You spend it on permanent stat upgrades that improve your starting stats, changes to how abilities behave, another chance after the wave that ended a run, or a reroll when none of a level’s upgrade options suit your build.

Choose your star

You start as a white dwarf, the remnant left after a star burns out. Stardust lets you become other celestial objects, including swollen giants, roiling supergiants and stranger remnants that spin fast enough to carve beams through their halos. Each star has its own custom shader rather than a simple color change, and comes with matching trails.