KONDRITE — a survey of endless space

A local or peer-to-peer online space combat game for one to five ships. Survival puts every ship on the same side against a field of drifting rocks, sharing one pool of lives. Friendly fire is optional: when enabled, a shot that hits your partner destroys them and costs the team a life. Battle Royale is a larger arena where every ship is an enemy and each has three lives. A bullet or asteroid collision damages the ship's two-hit hull; the next hit costs a life. The arena wall closes inward until only one ship is left flying, around stationary stars and black holes that pull ships, rocks and shots towards them. In Survival the field wraps: fly off one edge and you arrive at the opposite one, and so do the rocks and the shots. Battle royale has solid walls instead — ships bounce off them and bullets are destroyed by them. Once the walls close, they pass over rocks instead of pushing them. One or two people play at the same keyboard, one player per phone, and up to five play online with a screen each. Each player is named for the colour of their ship. Amber steers with A and D, thrusts with W and fires with the space bar. Green, the second player at a keyboard, steers with the left and right arrow keys, thrusts with the up arrow and fires with Enter. Cyan, pink and violet are flown by bots or by other people online. Those are the keys it starts with: press C at the title screen to open Settings, where every key can be reassigned and the browser remembers your choices. Press P or Escape to pause, or to open the game menu online. Tab in battle royale follows a different ship. Phones use either a directional stick or separate turn and acceleration buttons, with optional automatic fire.

One ship per phone — choose a stick or left/right/accelerate buttons in SETTINGS, then drag the controls to wherever your thumbs actually are. For two on one screen, open it on a laptop and bring someone with you.