This is a submission to AI Browser Game Jam 4

Your army is a crowd you shape with movement alone — and it dies. Stand still and they ring you. Run and they spear. There is not one order button in this game.

Movement is the only order you give

Most games about commanding a mob give you a mob that ignores you: the documented complaint about every minion in the genre is that they "run off and do their own thing". So there are no unit orders here, no selection box and no formation hotkeys — because there is no formation system. There is one flocking rule, read at three player speeds:

  • Stand still → the flock settles into a RING around you, guns facing out in every direction.
  • Sprint → it strings into a SPEAR: your light Ducklings and Teal ride your shoulder, your Geese and Swans string out behind, and the tail is the part that gets caught.
  • Put your back to a wall → the ring flattens into a SHIELD WALL of bodies between you and the marsh.

Nothing switches modes. Those are the same equation at three speeds, which is why the flock never stops feeling like part of your own body.

The army is the health bar

Growth is not a number going up — it is more birds on screen, each one a body you can count and lose. Five unit types with genuinely different weight and speed: Ducklings (fast, fragile), Drakes, Teal, Geese, and Swans (slow, heavy, hard to kill). Which ones you own changes how the flock moves, not just how hard it hits.

And they die. A late wave will take twenty birds off you while your recruiting still out-runs the casualties — attrition and growth in live tension, never side by side. When the front line thins, the composition of your army drifts underneath you, because the fast birds are the ones out front.

Twelve waves, three axes, and the Old Heron

  • The draft — every wave survived, choose one of three upgrades across three distinct axes: FLOCK doctrine, per-BIRD promotions, and YOU. A build ends up a shape, not a number.
  • BREAK — spend your furthest birds as a bomb. It costs real bodies. There is a core squad you can never spend.
  • RALLY — turn banked grain into new birds, mid-fight.
  • THE ROOST — down is earned every single run, win or lose, and buys permanent unlocks: new unit types, a bigger core squad, a free BREAK, a fatter opening flock.
  • THE OLD HERON — wave twelve, and it does not care how many of you there are.

Death is a checkpoint, never a restart

The flock scatters and you keep everything: your unlocks, your down, and the wave you reached — with the army you carried into it. The game autosaves at every wave boundary. Close the tab; the title screen offers you RESUME.

Free, browser-playable, no download, no account. WASD or arrows to move, SHIFT or SPACE to sprint, Q to BREAK, E to RALLY. Every pixel is drawn in code and every sound is synthesised — the whole game is 45 KB.

Sound by ZzFX (MIT, © Frank Force).

More from CSAF: our catalogue — including CHARGE BARGE, Banneret: Succession and OTTERBOUND, plus developer tools for RPG Maker, GameMaker, Unity and Unreal.

More free browser games from CSAF

Every one of these plays in one click. No install, no account, and they all save as you go.

  • HALFLIGHT — Everything in the vault is decaying. That is what pays you.
  • PRISMHORN — You never cast a spell. You cast a rainbow.
  • OTTERBOUND — Six otters, one raft, and a river that never ends the same way twice.
  • CHARGE BARGE — Drive a storm-powered ironclad up an insane hostile coastline.
  • RUSTBLOOM — You never find the key. You forge it.
  • BANNERET: SUCCESSION — You never move a knight. You plant a banner.
  • STARCHART — Every voyage you fly is inscribed forever. The route you took IS the constellation.

We also make the parts

Core Systems Asset Factory builds pixel-art packs and engine tooling for developers. If you build games as well as play them, these are ours:

Plus plugins and editor tools for RPG Maker MZ, GameMaker, Unity and Unreal — the full catalogue is here.

More information

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