ERG: STRIPLIGHT

3

How to play

After the Curtain Up splash, press Start (keyboard Enter, or a controller's Start button) on the title screen and on each of the two how-to-play pages. Fly the skiff with the D-pad (arrow keys, or a controller's d-pad or left stick). A (keyboard Z) fires lamp pellets: hold it to keep firing. B (keyboard X) fires the Striplight beam: hold it and a bar of light sweeps the whole row the skiff is flying in, hurting every enemy in that row at once. C (keyboard C) slows the skiff to half speed so you can thread narrow gaps. Start pauses. The row of cells at the top of the screen is your helmet lamp: it is your health and the beam's fuel. Every hit costs two cells, and the beam burns about one cell every one and a half seconds, though it will never take the last cell. Glow motes, dropped by some enemies, refill a cell each. Fresnel Cells make the pellets stronger, up to level three; losing a life costs one level. The beam is the right tool against a line of enemies, against armour, and as a lure: moths follow the beam. A Snuffer, a turret on the rock, puts the beam out for a moment when the light touches it, so shoot Snuffers with pellets. Flatlings crawl across the field and lay mines. Each of the four stages (The Gloaming Shelf, Sunken Gantry, The Moth Orchard, The Curfew Wall) ends in a boss: Tallowback, Sluicewarden, Wickmother and the Curfew Engine. Touching the rock or an enemy costs energy too. When the lamp is out you lose one of your three lives and start again from the last checkpoint; there are no continues. Destroy the Curfew Engine to relight the Dawn Beacon and win.