Beltrunner

Beltrunner

One ship against the belt.
Command your ship, upgrade it at the hangar, survive an onslaught of cosmological events, and break the bullet-hell bosses waiting at the edge of every sector - solo, or with a crew of up to eight.

What is Beltrunner?

Beltrunner is an asteroid-belt shoot-'em-up crossed with a bullet-hell and a horde-survival roguelite. It fuses the auto-firing, build-crafting rush of a horde survival run, the phase-shifting boss duels of a bullet-hell shooter, and the open-drift dogfighting of a classic arcade space shooter into one relentless run.

You only fly - your weapons fire themselves. Every sector is a ten-minute fight to stay alive as the belt thickens, hostile ships warp in, and the cosmos itself turns against you. Level up mid-run to draft an ever-nastier arsenal, cash your salvaged Scrap into permanent ship upgrades between runs, and drift-dodge your way through boss patterns that only get denser as their health drops. Clear all five sectors and The Void opens - an endless, ever-escalating gauntlet with your name on the high-score board.

Features

Upgrade your ship at the hangar. Salvage Scrap on every run and spend it between runs on permanent upgrades: tougher hull, hotter guns, better luck, extra weapon slots, even a one-time escape pod. Unlock and pilot eight distinct hulls, from the nimble Scout to the flagship Sovereign, each with its own playstyle.

Weather cosmic events. Eighteen space events crash your run: black holes that swallow the field, sweeping pulsar beams, rolling walls of plasma, charging gamma-ray bursts, toxic nebulae hiding loot, ion storms that foul your weapon cycling, a starless rogue planet you can duck behind, plus pirate ambushes, elite marauders, and a capital-ship dreadnought that has to be broken before it jumps out.

Build a deadly arsenal. You fly; your weapons handle the rest. Draft from thirty weapons, from the humble Pulse Blaster to legendaries like the Singularity Core and Solar Annihilator, then fuse a maxed weapon with the right passive to unlock one of twenty-one screen-clearing evolutions.

Break the bullet-hell bosses. Every sector ends when a giga-asteroid boss warps in: Kernabos, Pulsar Heart, the Broodmother, Twin Shards, and Ouroboros Belt. Each is a multi-phase danmaku duel that gets faster and deadlier as it falls apart. Dodge the rings, spirals, and beams inside the arena, and tear it down.

No two runs alike. Seeded, roguelite runs keep the belt unpredictable. Each level-up offers three rarity-weighted upgrade cards; reroll or banish the ones you don't want. Spawns, events, and loot are all rolled fresh, so every run is its own story.

Go endless. Clear all five sectors to unlock The Void: a no-timer, ever-scaling boss gauntlet. Survive as long as you can and carve your name into the high-score board.

Bring a crew

The belt is better with company. Fly with up to seven friends - one click from a Steam lobby.

Everybody drafts their own cards, so no two ships in a squad ever come out the same. Hold a lane with a rail driver while your wingman rakes the flank with tesla arcs and a third pilot rains missiles from the dark - the greedy, lopsided builds you'd never risk alone are the ones that carry a crew. The belt notices the extra guns and answers in kind: every rock and every raider comes in tougher for each pilot you bring.

Nobody sits a run out. Get flattened and a teammate hauls you back in twenty seconds later, and cracking a boss puts the whole crew back on their feet. Your team's names, hulls, and last known bearings stay on your screen the whole way down. The run ends only when every last ship goes dark - so hold the line for each other.

The arsenal

Four weapon slots and four attachment slots to start, up to seven of each once you've bought both ranks of Expanded Bays and picked a hull that carries a spare. Everything fires itself. What you choose is what fires, and every card you take makes the next choice narrower and nastier.

Legendaries

Nine of them, and they are the rarest thing in the deck - one weight against a common's fifty, tilted only by the Luck you buy at the hangar and the jackpots you crack mid-run. They cool down in half-minutes rather than seconds, cap at level 4, and never evolve. They don't need to.

• Singularity Core - Births a black hole that devours, then detonates. Hauls the field into a single point and blows the point up.
  
• Solar Annihilator - A colossal beam sweeps a full circle around you. Screen-length, and it takes its time.
  
• Chrono Stasis - Freezes time for everything but you. The whole sector stops. You don't.
  
• Starfall Protocol - Calls down a rain of meteors across the sector. Sixteen impacts, marked a heartbeat before they land.
  
• Neutron Comet - Calls down a comet that ploughs the sector and leaves it burning. The furrow keeps killing long after the comet is gone.
  
• Blink Barrage - Phase to each threat in turn, detonating on arrival. Six targets, six blasts, and you are somewhere else each time.
  
• Quasar Beacon - Rings of coherent light freeze the sector, then shatter what they froze. Frozen things take more than double.
  
• Fission Protocol - Primes every target. Anything that dies while primed detonates. One kill becomes a chain reaction.
  
• Dreadnought Broadside - A phantom capital ship warps in and unloads everything. Five volleys, twelve shells apiece.

Evolutions

Max a weapon out, be holding its paired attachment, and the next chest can fuse the two. Twenty-one of them, one per base weapon. An evolved weapon is a different animal on the same silhouette - and it never evolves again, so the build you finish is the build you finish.

• Nova Lance - A screen-length piercing rail through the nearest threat.
  
• Meteor Storm - Continuous 360-degree shrapnel bursts.
  
• Solar Lance - A searing wide beam that melts anything it locks onto.
  
• Ring of Ruin - A dense double ring of shards that shreds all it grazes.
  
• Singularity Mines - Mines that implode into a huge, crushing blast.
  
• Hydra Barrage - A swarm of homing missiles floods the field.
  
• Pulsar Burst - A massive shockwave that hurls threats away, burning.
  
• Twin Comets - A pair of long-range shards spiral out and back.
  
• Plasma Wake - A torrent of piercing bolts trailing the ship.
  
• Storm Cage - Relentless lightning that cages the field in arcs.
  
• Absolute Zero - A glacial cone that freezes targets solid.
  
• Swarm Protocol - Five focus-firing drones swarm the nearest targets.
  
• Annihilator Rail - A screen-length rail that erases whole lanes.
  
• Event Horizon - A vast well that swallows the battlefield.
  
• Inferno Lance - A roaring column of fire. Nothing it touches stops burning.
  
• Relativistic Driver - Slugs that punch through everything, harder the faster you fly.
  
• Executioner - Reaps the wounded outright, and barely needs to cool down.
  
• Debris Storm - Drags in scrap from across the sector and repays every piece as a barrage.
  
• Sawblade Storm - Sawdiscs that bounce until there is nothing left to hit.
  
• Cluster Barrage - Triple shells that burst into walls of piercing shrapnel.
  
• Overwatch Grid - A lattice of hardened turrets that never stops firing.

The pairings

Twenty-one base weapons, twenty-one attachments, and the recipe each pair is hiding. Weapons max at level 8; attachments at 4 or 5.

WeaponPaired attachmentEvolves intoPulse BlasterTargeting Array (+15% range)Nova LanceScatter CannonOverclocked Coils (-8% cooldown)Meteor StormMining LaserFocus Lens (+12% damage)Solar LanceOrbital ShardsGyro Stabilizer (+15% area)Ring of RuinProximity MinesVolatile Payload (+12% explosion & area)Singularity MinesMissile PodGuidance Chip (+12% projectile speed)Hydra BarrageIon WaveDeflector Plating (+3% damage reduction)Pulsar BurstComet FlailTether Coupling (+15% projectile duration)Twin CometsTail GunAfterburner Injector (+5% move speed)Plasma WakeTesla ArcCapacitor Bank (-6% cooldown)Storm CageCryo SprayerCoolant Loop (+12 hull, +0.5 hull/s)Absolute ZeroAttack DronesDrone Uplink (+1 projectile / 2 levels)Swarm ProtocolRail DriverLucky Beacon (+3% crit chance)Annihilator RailRicochet DiscSlipstream Coil (+2% damage per 100 speed)Sawblade StormFlak CannonShrapnel Casing (+1 pierce / 2 levels)Cluster BarrageGraviton SnareSalvage Magnet (+18% magnet radius)Event HorizonSentry PodFabricator Core (+12% deployable damage)Overwatch GridPlasma TorchCatalyst Coil (+18% status strength & duration)Inferno LanceMomentum DriverThruster Array (+25% boost capacity)Relativistic DriverReaper CannonOvercharge Cell (+0.15x crit damage)ExecutionerSalvage HaloSurvey Scanner (+10% XP)Debris Storm
Three more weapons never appear on a card at all: the Ram Prow, Aegis Array, and Harpoon Tether come welded to the hulls that carry them, and level up like anything else you own.

Events

Space doesn't wait for you. The deeper a run goes, the more the belt throws at you: hazards to survive and threats to hunt down.

Cosmic hazards

• Black Hole - A singularity drags everything inward. Fight the pull, or feed the belt to it for XP.
  
• Pulsar - Sweeping beams rake the sector. Time your boosts through the rotating twin beams.
  
• Solar Flare - Walls of plasma roll through. Slip through the safe gaps before they close.
  
• Meteor Shower - Volatile rocklets rain down. A storm of little rocks, all aimed at you.
  
• Wormhole Pair - Linked portals. The jump burns hull and blasts the exit. Every trip costs hull, and the arrival tears open on whatever waits there.
  
• Derelict Freighter - Hold the cargo zone to salvage it. Camp the wreck long enough and it cracks open for loot.
  
• Comet - Race its tail for a trail of scrap. Chase it down and sweep up everything it sheds.
  
• Supply Drop - Guard the pod until it cracks open. Hold your ground for the reward inside.
  
• Binary Stars - Twin suns spiral inward. Clear the blast zone. When they converge, everything nearby detonates.
  
• Gamma-Ray Burst - A burst line is charging. Get off it. One telegraphed beam that erases its lane.
  
• Nebula Clouds - Toxic fog hides loot at its heart. Brave the burn to reach the chest at the center.
  
• Solar Wind - A charged gust drags the whole sector downwind. Rocks and hulls slide with it, and your loot blows away fastest of all - collecting means chasing downwind.
  
• Kessler Cascade - Every rock you break sprays shrapnel. Mind your fire. Your own guns turn the field against you.
  
• Coronal Mass Ejection - Ion clouds foul your weapon cycling. Stay clear. Inside a cloud your guns cycle slow - but so do the enemies. Fight there, or give up the ground.
  
• Rogue Planet - A starless world drifts through. It blocks fire - and crushes. The only solid cover in the game. Hug it, don't flee it.

Hostile contacts

• Pirate Ambush - Raiders warp in. Clear them for loot. Wipe the whole pack for a chest.
  
• Elite Marauder - A hardened raider closes in. Kill it before it jumps. A beefed-up hunter carrying your loot; down it before it flees.
  
• Dreadnought - A capital ship opens fire. Break it before it jumps out. A telegraphed-beam mini-boss guarding a big reward.

Endless Mode

Beat all five sectors and The Void opens.

There's no timer here, just you and the dark. Survive as long as you can while the belt grows denser, elites grow common, and a full-power boss warps in every ten minutes, drawn at random from all five sector bosses and stronger each time it returns. Every gauntlet you clear drops loot and keeps the run alive; the moment your hull gives out, it's over.

How long can you last? Beltrunner tracks your best survival time and top scores, with milestones for enduring 10, 20, 30, and 60 minutes in The Void. Set the record. Then beat it.