Missile Defense

How to play Missile Defense

Missile Defense is a fast, reflex-driven arcade shooter in the classic tradition of city-defence games. Enemy missiles streak down from the top of the screen toward a row of six cities, and it is your job to shoot them out of the sky before they land. You aim by tapping — the game launches a counter-missile from your central base to the exact point you touch, where it blossoms into a glowing blast. Anything caught in that blast is destroyed. The rules are simple enough to grasp in seconds, but survival demands quick eyes, good timing and a feel for leading fast-moving targets. Each wave you clear throws more missiles at you, and they fall faster, so every run becomes a test of how long you can keep your cities standing.

The goal

Protect your cities. Six cities sit along the ground at the bottom of the field, and every incoming missile is aimed at one of them. Destroy the missiles in mid-air with your counter-blasts and the cities they were targeting survive. Let a missile slip through and the city it hits is gone for good. You lose the moment your last city is destroyed, so your true objective is to survive as many escalating waves as possible while scoring points for every missile you shoot down.

The battlefield

The screen is a tall vertical field. Along the bottom stand your six cities — three to the left and three to the right of a central launch base. That base is the turret that fires all of your counter-missiles. Enemy missiles enter from the top edge at random positions and travel in straight lines toward the cities, leaving a red trail behind them so you can read their path. Your counter-missiles are much faster than the incoming rockets, which gives you the split-second edge you need to intercept them.

Controls — tap to aim

There is only one control: point at where you want a blast to appear. On a touch screen, tap the spot; with a mouse, click it. The instant you do, a counter-missile launches from the base and flies to that exact point, then detonates. You do not aim at the missile itself — you aim at the empty air where you expect the missile to be by the time your blast arrives. Because counter-missiles travel quickly and blasts have a real radius, you have a comfortable margin, but leading fast targets is the core skill of the game.

Rules of play

• Enemy missiles rain down from the top of the screen, each locked onto one of your cities and following a straight diagonal path toward it.
• Tap or click anywhere in the sky to launch a counter-missile from your base to that point. It flies there and explodes into an expanding blast.
• The blast destroys every enemy missile it touches while it is expanding and holding — one well-placed blast can wipe out several missiles at once.
• Any missile that reaches the ground destroys the city it was aimed at. Destroyed cities cannot be rebuilt.
• Each wave gives you a limited supply of counter-missiles (your ammo). Ammo reloads fully at the start of every new wave, so spend it — but do not waste it.

How blasts work

A counter-missile does no damage while it is flying — the destruction happens when it detonates. Each blast has a lifetime: it starts as a pinpoint, swells outward to its full radius, holds for a moment, then shrinks back to nothing. It can destroy missiles at any moment while its circle covers them, so a blast is dangerous for its whole life, not just the instant it appears. This is why timing matters: fire too early and the blast may fade before a fast missile arrives; time it so the missile flies into your blast at its widest and you will catch it — and often its neighbours too.

Waves and difficulty

Missiles arrive in waves. Clear every missile in a wave — by shooting them down or, unavoidably, by losing cities — and the next wave begins, along with a survival bonus for each city still standing. Every wave sends more missiles, they descend faster, and they arrive in tighter succession. Difficulty also sets the starting pace: Easy gives you slow missiles, generous spacing and plenty of ammo; Normal speeds things up and sends denser waves; Hard rains fast, frequent missiles and hands you less ammo, so every shot has to count.

Scoring and game over

You score 25 points for each enemy missile you destroy, plus a bonus of 15 points for every city that survives a wave. Scores are capped at 99,999. There is no winning screen — Missile Defense is an endurance game, so the run continues until your last city falls. When that happens the game ends, your final score and the wave you reached are shown, and if you are signed in your best result per difficulty is recorded on the leaderboard. Chase a higher wave and a higher score each time.

Strategy tips

• Lead your targets. Aim at the point in the sky where a missile is heading, not where it is right now, so the missile flies into your blast as it opens.
• Group your shots. Because a blast has a wide radius and lingers, a single well-placed detonation can take out a whole cluster of missiles — wait half a beat for them to bunch up rather than firing at each one.
• Defend the busiest area first. When several missiles converge on one part of the field, intercept them high and early so one city loss does not cascade into several.
• Mind your ammo. Ammo only reloads between waves, so a string of panicked misses can leave you defenceless mid-wave. Miss a shot, breathe, and place the next one deliberately.
• Intercept high. The higher you catch a missile, the more time you have to fire a second blast if the first one misses, and the less likely a stray missile is to reach the ground.

Frequently asked questions