Reading a bullet-hell screen
Starfall is a vertical shoot 'em up of the bullet-hell kind. The enemy fire is meant to fill the screen, and you are meant to survive it anyway. The trick that makes this fair is the hitbox. Only the bright dot at the centre of your ship can be hit, and it is a small fraction of the hull you see. Wings passing over a bullet cost you nothing.
So keep your eyes a little above your ship, on the bullets that will reach you next, not on the ship itself. Leave the hitbox dot on in Settings until you can feel where it is.
You cannot fly into the top part of the field, where fleets enter. Your space is the lower two thirds, and you need to use its full width.
Moving against aimed fire
Grunts and gunners fire at the spot where you are when they shoot. That makes aimed fire easy to beat with a simple habit: keep drifting slowly to one side. Each shot lands where you were, and the next one follows you a step behind. When you near the edge, wait for a gap in the volleys and cut back the other way in one smooth move.
Avoid big dodges. A long dash carries you into fire you never looked at.
Darters don't shoot at all. They come in as a column from one top corner and dive at a slant across the field, leaving through the far side around the middle of the screen. When a darter wave starts, drop toward the bottom of your space and let the column cross above you.
Breaking the capital ships
Each stage ends with a capital ship that runs through the same four phases in a loop:
- Aimed bursts for about four and a half seconds. Use the slow drift from above.
- Rings for about four seconds. Each ring is a full circle of bullets that rotates a little each volley. Find the gap nearest you and slip through it before the ring spreads out.
- A sweeping fan for five seconds, a stream that swings back and forth across the screen. Stay on the side it has just left, and cross behind it as it turns.
- A short rest of under two seconds with no fire.
Here is a worked example. The rest phase begins. Move under the ship now, because your gun fires straight up and this is your cleanest damage window. When the aimed bursts start, drift right a step at a time. As the rings begin, stop drifting and pick a gap. When the fan swings toward you, cross behind it to the side it just passed. Then the rest comes round again, and you move back under the ship. Learning this loop matters more than fast reflexes. A broken capital ship always drops a power capsule, a shield and a bomb.
Power, shields and bombs
Being hit costs a gun level as well as a life, so your first green capsules are worth chasing. At full power, extra green capsules turn into bonus points.
Tanks always drop a capsule when destroyed, while other hulls only sometimes do. Enemies killed by a bomb never drop anything. Bomb a wave and you lose its rewards along with its bullets.
- Shields last about six seconds. Save the moment of pickup for a phase you find hard. Don't grab one in a quiet stretch.
- Bombs clear every enemy bullet, hit everything on screen hard and give you a brief moment of safety. Spend one the moment you see no way out. Waiting one more second to be sure usually costs the life.
Getting better run by run
Hostiles that settle near the top leave after a few seconds, and escapes score nothing, so kill the holders first when it is safe.
Stages grow from three waves of fleets before the boss to six by the later stages. Enemy health and score rise every stage, so deeper stages pay more. The Gentle preset gives you five lives, four bombs and thinner fire. It is the place to learn the boss loop. Endless mode keeps adding stages after the last one, and bullet speed and fire rate stop climbing past stage eleven. From there it is a test of how steady you stay.
