Combat clarity

• Final deaths now show the impact and fatal cause clearly, clear lingering hazards, and transition into Game Over without the red vignette seam or secondary combat messages covering the moment.
  
• Game Over, results, and leaderboard transitions now stay composed while data loads instead of dropping to a black screen.
  
• Score, combo, survival, mission status, and high-score chase information have clearer priority during dense fights.
  
• Ace identity plates, combo feedback, first-run controls, and combat notifications now avoid the permanent HUD lanes.
  
• Ordinary full-health enemy bars are quieter while damaged, durable, elite, Ace, and boss health remains readable.
  
• Pilot Order progress respects its compact top-lane presentation and lower-priority messages are suppressed during life loss.

Controls and run flow

• Added Fire Input Hold/Toggle and Mouse Steering Off/On options, with local and Steam Cloud persistence.
  
• Fire input now remains consistent through pause and presentation transitions and resets safely after focus loss or a new run.
  
• Combo progress now carries through non-interactive wave and boss transitions and expires only during active play.
  
• Bomb targeting and opening boss inputs are more reliable around briefings and vulnerability windows.
  
• Overrun entry reinforcements no longer cause ship contact damage before their entry phase is active.

Menu, Hangar and accessibility

• Mode briefings now include an explicit LAUNCH RUN action while keyboard and controller quick launch remain available.
  
• Hangar descriptions, traits, and weaknesses no longer truncate at common desktop resolutions.
  
• Viewing a hull no longer silently equips it. Previewed and active hulls are labeled clearly, launching commits the visible choice, and VIEW RECOMMENDED is available.
  
• Ship Details keeps the Hangar context visible instead of opening over an empty black backdrop.
  
• Added persistent UI Volume, Flash Intensity, and Reduced Motion settings.

Thanks for the reports, recordings, and difficult edge cases. They continue to make the swarm clearer without making it softer.

Nova Swarm has changed dramatically since its June 9 launch.

The game is still built around fast restarts, learnable boss patterns, bullet-heavy combat and the pull of one cleaner run. But the current version offers much more to master: run-long Tactical builds, a pure score-attack ruleset, Overrun from Sector 51, 30 ships, 60 Cabinet Wonders and a major overhaul of combat clarity, controls and presentation.

If you played at launch—or wishlisted Nova Swarm and waited—this is the version to look at.


Mayhem Tactical is the main ranked route. Every boss victory presents three upgrades. Choose one, and it remains active for the rest of the run.

There are 32 upgrades across Offense, Mobility, Defense and Utility. They can stack, evolve and combine into Fusion protocols. Holds, bans and rescans let you steer the build without slowing down the arcade action.

The ship sets the starting point. The Draft determines what it becomes.

Prefer a cleaner test of execution? Mayhem Pure removes the Draft entirely, leaving ship choice, positioning, pattern knowledge and score chasing at the centre of the run. Pure and Tactical have separate leaderboards.


Reach Sector 30 in Mayhem to unlock a direct start at Sector 51.

Overrun has dedicated Pure and Tactical variants. Tactical begins with five upgrades already installed, then continues to evolve after each boss. It is an immediate jump into late-run pressure for players who want to see how far their build—and their reflexes—can carry them.

Daily Signal and a wider set of mastery objectives—including Pilot Orders, Side Directives, Ace Hunts, Nemesis Protocols and Rival Wings—add goals between leaderboard attempts.

The Cabinet now contains 60 Wonders to discover, with rare artwork and field reports to uncover.


Since launch, Nova Swarm has received hundreds of fixes, refinements and content additions. The most important result is a more readable and trustworthy combat experience.

Projectiles, boss telegraphs, warning lanes, reinforcements, danger points, near-miss feedback, dodge timing and life-loss recovery have all been reworked. The new Nova Command HUD separates urgent warnings from routine information, while refined VFX, hit feedback and audio make threats easier to understand during dense fights.

The goal is not to make Nova Swarm easier. It is to make danger readable, deaths understandable and every successful dodge feel earned.

• 30 distinct ships with different weapons, handling, traits and tradeoffs
  
• 32 Tactical upgrades, including stacks, evolutions and Fusion protocols
  
• Ranked Mayhem Pure and Mayhem Tactical
  
• Overrun Pure and Tactical from Sector 51
  
• Daily challenges and expanded mastery objectives
  
• 60 Cabinet Wonders
  
• 81 Steam achievements
  
• Separate leaderboards and detailed local Run Reports
  
• Full controller support and keyboard remapping
  
• Eight interface languages, plus improved ultrawide, 4K and UI scaling

Your existing scores, XP, achievements, saves and Steam Cloud progress remain intact.

If the launch version did not quite click, give Nova Swarm one more run. The game is deeper, clearer and far more varied than it was on June 9.

And if you have been playing throughout the updates: thank you. Your reports, recordings, suggestions and difficult questions have directly shaped the game it is today.

Play Nova Swarm on Steam.

— Tiny Foundry