How to play Galactic Overkill
Controls, weapons, power-ups and the things nobody tells you.
Galactic Overkill is a free multiplayer space shooter that runs in your browser. You fly a small neon ship, top-down, through an asteroid field shared with up to fourteen other pilots. This page is the long version of the in-game How To Play card: everything the game does, in the order you will meet it.
Starting a match
- Open galacticoverkill.com. The game loads in the page — there is no installer, no plugin and no account.
- Type a callsign (2–12 letters). It is stored on your device, so you only do this once.
- Press Quick Play for a public free-for-all, Play Co-Op for wave survival, or pick Conquest for team territory control. See the game modes guide for what each one asks of you.
- You warp in with a three-second countdown and a few seconds of spawn shield. Use it — you cannot move or shoot during the countdown, but nothing can hurt you either.
If a public lobby is quiet, bots fill the empty seats so the arena is never dead, and they drop out again as real pilots arrive.
Controls
Keyboard
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Steer | WASD or the arrow keys |
| Fire | Space (hold it — every weapon is hold-to-fire) |
| Brake / reverse | S or ↓ |
| Chat | Enter |
| Scoreboard | Tab (hold) |
Phone and tablet
Touch controls appear automatically. The left thumbstick steers and the right pad fires — you can hold both at once, and you should. It works in portrait and in landscape. You can also add the game to your home screen from your browser's share menu and it will open full-screen like an installed app.
Do not like where the sticks sit? Open Settings → Edit HUD Layout and drag the controls and readouts where your thumbs actually are. The layout is saved per device type, so a phone and a tablet each keep their own.
Gamepad
Any standard controller works, and it works in the menus too — you can navigate the whole title screen without touching the keyboard.
| Action | Control |
|---|---|
| Steer | Left stick — a heading, not a thrust vector: point where you want to go and the ship turns to it |
| Fire | Right trigger |
| Brake | L1 / L2 |
| Pick an upgrade card | X / Y / B |
Power-ups
Power-up orbs float around the arena and expire on their own clock if nobody takes them — they blink before they go. Fly close and you pick them up automatically; the grab radius is generous, so a fly-by counts. Most of them stack, which is where the game gets its name.
| Power-up | What it does |
|---|---|
| Hull repair | Restores health. |
| Fire rate | Permanently faster cadence for this life. |
| Engines | More top speed. |
| Turning | Faster turn rate, capped at about twice base so the ship stays aimable. |
| Crit strike | +10% chance of a 2.5× damage hit on top of everyone's 5% base. |
| Spread | A temporary wider shot pattern. |
| Afterburner | Five seconds at 1.7× movement speed. |
| Overdrive | Triple fire rate while it lasts. |
| Magnet | Eight seconds of a much wider pickup radius — sweep the field. |
| Double damage | Eight seconds of 2× damage. |
| Shield | Absorbs incoming fire. |
| Ghost | Five seconds where enemy bullets pass straight through you. Flak blasts, the harvester beam and ramming still land — it is not full invulnerability. |
Levelling up and upgrade cards
You earn XP for kills, for breaking asteroids and for claiming loot crates. Every level, the game stops and offers you a choice of upgrade cards. They are permanent for that life and lost when you die, which is the whole shape of a run: you are always either building or rebuilding.
The pool includes Fire Rate +, Rapid Fire ++, Engines +, Afterburner ++, Crit Strike + / ++, Turning + / ++, Max Hull +25, Full Repair, Defense Orbit Shell — and the weapon cards below.
All ten weapons
Everyone spawns with the same gun. Every other weapon in the game arrives as an upgrade card on level-up, so there is no loadout screen, nothing to buy and nothing to grind — and no two runs build the same ship.
| Weapon | How it behaves | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Rapid | The default. Even cadence, 25 damage a hit, no drawback. | Always fine. Never the best. |
| Twin Shot | Two parallel bolts, each a little weaker. | You want a wider column of fire without losing rate. |
| Tri-Shot | Three bolts in a tight forward fan, every trigger. | Mid range, against pilots who strafe. |
| Shotgun | Seven pellets in a wide cone at half rate. | Point blank. It is devastating close and useless past a screen. |
| Railgun | One piercing slug, 55 damage, punches through everything in the line. | Lined-up targets, or anything you want dead in two hits. |
| Homing | Tracks whoever you were pointing at. | You are being chased and cannot aim backwards. |
| Flak | A lobbed shell that bursts into an area blast. | Crowds, crates and anyone hiding behind a rock. |
| Ricochet | Reflects off asteroids and the world edge up to three times. | Trick shots around cover. |
| Harvester | No bullets — a chain-lightning beam that latches onto every enemy and asteroid in range and zaps them all at once. | A brawl. It does not care about aim. |
| Charge Beam | Hold to charge, release for one instant piercing beam whose range, width and damage scale with the hold. A tap fizzles. | You have a second of cover and a target that will still be there. |
Loot crates, asteroids and the bounty
A loot crate drops every five kills across the lobby. Shoot it open — about eleven hits — and then sit inside it for three seconds to claim it. That three seconds is the point: the crate is not a pickup, it is a fight with a timer, and everyone on the map can see where it is.
Asteroids break into smaller rocks and pay XP. They also block shots, which makes them cover, and Ricochet turns them into a weapon.
Get three kills and you become the bounty. Your callsign is marked for everyone, you take 50% more incoming damage, killing you is worth bonus XP, and bots will path to you from most of the way across the map. A lead in Galactic Overkill is something you have to survive, not something you coast on.
Periodically a mothership warps in with an escort. It hits hard, and it drops three to five loot crates when it dies — which usually turns into the biggest fight of the match.
The daily mutator
One rule change rotates every day and applies to every public match. The current one is shown on the title screen.
- Loot Frenzy — crates everywhere.
- Rapid Fire — everyone's cadence is up.
- Asteroid Storm — a much denser field. More cover, less room.
- Rich Rocks — asteroids pay far more XP.
- Warp-Speed Boss — the mothership is fast.
- Power Surge — power-ups everywhere.
- Double XP — you level roughly twice as fast, so builds come online early.
In a private lobby the host picks the mutator instead of taking the day's.
Five things that will make you better immediately
- Do not fly straight. Every weapon in the game leads a straight line. A constant gentle arc beats a dodge you have to think about.
- Take the fire rate cards early. Damage per second compounds with everything else you pick up; a single big-damage card does not.
- Do not open a crate you cannot hold. Cracking it open with nobody nearby is a gift to whoever arrives at second two.
- Use the brake. Stopping is an aiming tool. Most new pilots never press it once.
- Break off when you become the bounty. At 50% extra damage taken, the fight you would have won at two kills is a fight you lose at three.