About Blade Survivor
Turning a crowd into a queue
The technique this game exists to teach is simple to describe and hard to do: keep moving in one direction around the outside of the arena, let the crowd string out into a line behind you, and turn to fight only the front of that line.
A group of eight enemies chasing you becomes eight individual fights rather than one fight against eight, because they arrive one at a time in the order they are fastest. Nothing about your character changes; the shape of the problem does.
The failure mode is the corner. A wall removes half your escape routes, and the enemies converge on a point you have already committed to. Nearly every run that ends early ends in a corner.
The roster, introduced one at a time
New enemy types unlock at fixed waves rather than appearing at random, so each silhouette arrives on its own and can be learned before the next one appears. Rushers are fast and die in one hit. Dodgers sidestep an attack thrown on reflex. Fliers approach on a curve. Shielded enemies absorb light attacks from the front.
Brutes arrive at wave seven: slow, four hits, and an unblockable slam you are meant to walk away from. Casters at wave nine are the priority target despite being the least immediately threatening, because they are the only enemy that can hurt you while you are dealing with something else. Spikers at wave eleven cannot be attacked at all and exist purely to make part of the arena unusable.
Untouched waves are the scoring strategy
Clearing a wave without taking a single hit pays 250 points multiplied by the wave number, on top of everything the kills were worth. At wave eight that is 2,000 points for a bonus that a careless run simply does not collect.
Combined with the combo multiplier resetting on damage, this means a clean run through wave six reliably out-scores a sloppy run through wave ten. Survival games on this site are a scoring genre, not an endurance one.
How to play
- Press Start. Use WASD or the arrow keys to move, and the mouse to aim your blade.
- Press Space for a light attack or K for a heavy one that hits a wider arc.
- Press Shift to dodge - it costs one stamina and gives brief invulnerability.
- Move continuously around the outside of the arena so the crowd forms a line behind you.
- Fight only the front of that line. Clearing a wave without taking a hit pays a large bonus.
- Five hearts. The run ends when they do.
Controls
| Where | What to do |
|---|---|
| Move | WASD or arrow keys |
| Aim | Mouse position, or your direction of travel on touch |
| Light attack | Space, J, or click |
| Heavy attack | K |
| Dodge | Shift or Z |
| Touch | Dodge and Attack buttons; drag to aim |
Scoring
These are the point values this game awards, before the combo multiplier is applied where it uses one. Hit quality changes the figure: a strike at the centre of the correct moment is worth substantially more than one at the edge of it.
Tips
- Never fight in a corner. Walk out of it before you swing, even if that costs you a step.
- Circle the outside of the arena in one direction. Reversing lets the crowd re-form.
- Kill casters first - they are the only enemy that can reach you across the arena.
- Heavy attacks hit a wider arc. Use them on the line, not on a single rusher.
- When a brute winds up, walk away. Blocking it costs stamina you will want shortly.
- Avoiding one hit is worth more than landing three, because of the untouched bonus.
Common mistakes
- Standing still to fight a group, which works for thirty seconds and then never again.
- Backing into a corner while focused on the enemy in front of you.
- Attacking a dodger on reflex - it sidesteps and punishes exactly that.
- Ignoring casters because they are not the closest threat.
- Spending all four stamina on dodges and having none left when a brute commits.
Features
- Open four-sided arena where positioning genuinely decides the run
- Seven enemy types introduced at fixed waves so each is learned in isolation
- Untouched-wave bonus that makes clean play out-score long play
- Dodge with visible invulnerability frames and a ghost trail
- Enemies trickle into a wave rather than materialising on top of you
- Local personal bests, stored only in your browser
