Iron Wing

A vertical bullet-hell shooter: firing is automatic, three weapons switch on the fly, and only the tiny point at the centre of the ship is hit.

A silver fighter climbing through deep space with pink and cyan engine trails — illustration, not a game screenshot
Illustration (AI-generated), not a game screenshot

Five stages, five multi-phase bosses, three main weapons. Firing is automatic — you never press a shoot key; your job is to walk the tiny hitbox at the centre of the ship through the gaps. Power level 4 and 6 each add a wingman, you carry three bombs, and chained kills push the multiplier to x8.

Released 2026-11-07 · Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-11-07

The title screen: four hard numbers sit above the start button — five stages, five bosses, three weapons, six power levels. The four lines below are the controls, and the first one says firing is automatic.
The title screen: four hard numbers sit above the start button — five stages, five bosses, three weapons, six power levels. The four lines below are the controls, and the first one says firing is automatic.
The opening of stage one. The seven HUD cells are score, stage, lives, bombs, power level, current weapon and combo. The tiny bright point at the centre of the ship is the hitbox — only that counts, not the whole aircraft.
The opening of stage one. The seven HUD cells are score, stage, lives, bombs, power level, current weapon and combo. The tiny bright point at the centre of the ship is the hitbox — only that counts, not the whole aircraft.
A wave pushing down, with a gap left between two columns of bullets. The two buttons at the lower right are the mobile weapon and bomb controls; on a keyboard they are C and X.
A wave pushing down, with a gap left between two columns of bullets. The two buttons at the lower right are the mobile weapon and bomb controls; on a keyboard they are C and X.

What kind of shooter this is

Vertical scrolling, ship at the bottom, enemies pressing down from above. It sits closer to the arcade rhythm of reading a pattern and then deciding where to move than to burying the screen in bullets: every wave leaves a gap you can pass through, and where that gap sits changes with the enemy type.

Firing is fully automatic on purpose. On a phone there is no second thumb for a shoot button, and what this genre actually tests is movement. Take the shooting away and keyboard and touch end up with the same job.

Three weapons, three ways to live

Spread covers the widest area and clears small craft fastest, at the cost of single-target damage. The laser collapses into one beam with punch, which is what you want against a boss weak point. Homing missiles turn toward the nearest target but fire slowly and travel slower. You can switch at any time, and the switch has its own sound cue.

Six power levels and two wingmen

Each P pickup raises power by one, from 1 to 6. Levels 4 and 6 each add a wingman that follows your movement and keeps firing, widening your output. Taking a hit drops you one power level, which makes holding power and holding lives the same problem.

Every stage refills one bomb, up to three. A bomb clears the screen of bullets, damages everything and gives a short window of invulnerability. It is there to save a run, not to raise a score.

Five stages, five bosses

Each stage has its own wave script generated from a fixed seed, so enemy positions and order are identical every time you open it — learnable on purpose. Stage bosses carry three health segments and change attacks as they lose them: rings, aimed shots, spirals, sweeping beams. Each time a segment breaks there is a clear stagger, which is your window to get close and punish it.

Backdrops change by stage: starfield, cloud deck, sea surface, ruined city, then back to deep space. Two parallax layers at different speeds do the work of telling you that you are still moving forward.

Combo, accuracy and the results screen

Kills chained within two seconds build the multiplier up to x8. It is not the loudest number on screen, but it is where most of the gap between two finished runs comes from. Taking a hit wipes the combo, so not getting hit is worth more than shooting one more craft.

Results report score, kills, best combo, accuracy and the stage reached. Accuracy is shots fired against shots that connected; spread is naturally low and laser naturally high, so it only means something within one weapon.

Playing on a phone

Drag anywhere on the canvas to move, as a relative drag — pull down and the ship moves down instead of jumping under your finger where your hand hides it. Firing is automatic, and the two buttons at the lower right switch weapons and drop a bomb, both usable while dragging.

On a keyboard it is arrows or WASD to move, C to switch, X for a bomb, P to pause, R to restart. Every sound is synthesised in the browser; no audio files are downloaded.

Questions

Why is there no shoot button?
Firing is automatic by design. Removing it leaves keyboard and touch with exactly one job — movement — and frees the other hand for weapons and bombs.

Why is the hitbox smaller than the ship?
Genre convention: only the bright point at the centre counts, so a wing clipping a bullet is not a hit. The point is drawn on screen so you can judge how close you are.

What happens when I am hit?
You lose a life and one power level, nearby bullets are cleared, and you get a brief invulnerable window. Three lives gone ends the run.

Where is the high score kept?
In this browser’s local storage only. No account, nothing uploaded; a different device starts from zero.

Take off and read the first gap — Runs on its own subdomain · 5 stages, 5 bosses · records stay on this device

Release notes

Since the first version on 2026-11-07, this page records what changed in each version of this game.

  1. 1.0.0 · 2026-11-07 — First release: five stages and five multi-phase bosses, three weapons, six power levels, three bombs and three lives, with automatic fire and a hitbox only at the centre of the ship.