Longthrow: Throw Bombs Survive Live

A bomb takes two seconds to get there. They do not wait. You hold the centre tower of three. Ahead of you, low in the grass, sits the thing you are protecting. Things walk out of the treeline to eat it, and some of them stop and shoot back at you. You throw bombs. You keep moving. THROW WHERE THEY WILL BE This is the whole skill. Hold the button and take as long as you like to line the shot up — nothing about aiming is timed. But the bomb is in the air for up to two seconds, the blast is only 2.6 metres across, and a walker covers more than four metres while it flies. Throw at where something is standing and you miss it at every range. Throw at where it is going and you don't. THE RETICLE NEVER LIES The arc you see while aiming and the bomb that actually flies are the same solver, at the same time step. Bombs go off on contact, so the blast happens exactly where the ring is drawn. When you miss, you missed. Nothing here is a coin flip. TWO THINGS TO THROW The bomb: one round, a tight blast, the shortest flight. The cluster: a violet canister that cracks open above the ground and lays down nine bursts in a solid disc — twice the footprint, twice the magazine cost, and half again the flight time, so it is a harder lead for a wider answer. You can carry one of each. You can never carry two clusters. So you hold it, and you watch the field for the moment three of them line up. WAVES THAT BREATHE A wave is a budget of enemies, not a stretch of time. Clear it and the field empties and you get eight seconds to reload, reposition and think. Fall behind and the next wave starts anyway and the two overlap. How well you are playing is something you can hear in the pacing. FOUR THINGS COME OUT OF THE WOODS Crawlers, which walk straight at it. Shooters, which stop at thirty metres and charge you rent for every second you stand still to aim. Husks, which take three bombs and are the wall you stall against. And spawnlings, which arrive in tight knots of four or five — and are the reason you were holding the cluster. LOSING PAYS Every run banks salvage, win or lose. More for clearing more, more again for holding on. Spend it in the armoury on heavier charges and faster hands. The upgrade is not a number in a menu, either: the bomb in your hand changes with it, mark by mark, so you can see what you are carrying. THEN THE WALL MOVES OUT Hold the seven-wave assault and a nine-wave siege unlocks. Hold that and there is an eleven. Above all of them sits an endless one with no win condition at all — only a record. IT KEEPS SCORE HONESTLY The end card reports your kills per bomb. Not stars, not a percentage of nothing: the real number, the same one this game's own test bots are measured against. A bot that throws at where things are standing scores about 0.46. A bot that solves the intercept perfectly scores about 0.73. You will find out where you sit. THE SOUND ARRIVES LATE Your bomb goes off forty metres away and you see it before you hear it, because sound takes time to cross a field. That is not a flourish. It is the game teaching you distance through your ears, and it is why you should play this one with the sound on. BUILT OUT OF NOTHING Every mesh, every material and every sound in this game is generated in code when it starts. There is not one art asset in it. No accounts. No sign-in. No connection required. Throw where they will be. Hold the line.