Rocket Mouse

Fight with light, not bullets.

The Grey has swallowed the Great Star, and its colours have scattered across space as frightened monsters called Shades. You are Rocke, a young pilot from a grey mining asteroid, flying with Luma, an AI living inside a glowing light core. Free every colour and bring light back to the galaxy.

How to play (mouse only)

Your ship follows the mouse.

• Left click = Red · Middle click = Green · Right click = Blue
• Hold a button to charge (your ship glows in that colour) and release to fire.
• Hold two buttons to mix light: Red + Green = Yellow, Green + Blue = Cyan, Red + Blue = Magenta.
• Hit a Shade with its exact colour and it bursts into light and is freed. The wrong colour makes it absorb your shot and speed up, and your combo resets.
• Touching a Shade or its shots costs a heart, and a Shade that escapes costs points. Free 5 in a row for a combo bonus, and earn up to 3 stars per level for accuracy and hearts kept.

Enemies that make you think

Embers dive fast, Moss drifts in waves, Drips move in steps and drop shots, Sparks zigzag, Tides arrive in swarms and Wisps teleport. Later, Prisms change colour every 2 seconds, Knots are mixed colours you break apart one channel at a time, and Hollows hide inside a grey shell that only White light can crack.

What's in it

• 10 levels, each adding a new colour or twist
• 9 kinds of Shade and 2 bosses, including a three-phase final fight
• 3 ships with different speed, fire rate and hearts
• The White power move: fill the bar, hold all three buttons and free everything on screen
• A grey world that slowly fills with colour as you free it

What you need: a PC (Windows or Mac) with a mouse that has a middle button (a scroll-wheel click). It plays in your browser; best in fullscreen. It doesn't work with touch screens or trackpads alone.

About this project: a solo project, built in 3 months. The pixel art was generated with PixelLab (sprites) and Adobe Firefly (backgrounds, cutscenes and the level map), then cleaned up by me in Aseprite. The music and sound effects were made with Google Gemini.

Credits: game design, story and art direction by Daravath Saathvik. Fonts: Press Start 2P (CodeMan38) and Silkscreen (Jason Kottke), SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Made by Daravath Saathvik — portfolio: https://daravath-saathvik.pages.dev/ · how I made Rocket Mouse: https://daravath-saathvik.pages.dev/work/rocket-mouse.html

Played it? Tell me in the comments what confused you, or where you wanted to stop.