Splitcore

Overcharge a tower for a burst kill, or save the energy for a new one — the choice gets harder every wave.

Date: 2026-09-02 Genre: Tower defense Status: Playable build

Concept

A stream of creatures crawls down a winding conduit toward a crystal core. You place blockers along the route and, once they're down, you have exactly one other action: tap a blocker to overcharge it. Overcharging triples its damage for a few seconds, then leaves it weak while it cools. That's the whole toolkit, and the game leans on it hard: every energy point spent overcharging is a point you didn't spend building.

How to play

Tap or click an empty ring near the path to build a blocker (cost rises with each one you place). Tap a built blocker to overcharge it. Enemies that reach the crystal core chip away at its health; lose all of it and the run ends. Restart with the on-screen button or the R key. Start the next wave early with the "Start Wave" button or Space/Enter, or just wait out the countdown.

Core mechanics

• One blocker type, one upgrade action. Overcharge is timing-based, not a tech tree, so the depth comes from when you spend it.
• Armored enemies barely notice a normal hit; they're built to force an overcharge or absorb five slow shots instead.
• Splitting enemies fracture into two fast fragments if killed by a normal shot. Finish one with an overcharged shot instead and it dies clean, plus pays a bonus — the greedy play is also the safer one, if you can afford it.
• Shared energy pool: every overcharge is energy you can't spend on a new blocker, and every new blocker is coverage you don't have yet.
• Combo timer: kills within two seconds of each other stack a score multiplier that resets the moment you go quiet.

Progression & scoring

Each wave raises enemy count, shrinks the gap between spawns (down to a 0.35s floor), and speeds enemies up. The first two waves are basic enemies only; armored ones show up at wave 3, splitters at wave 5, and by wave 8 you're facing all three mixed together. Score comes from kills, weighted by the ten-stack combo multiplier, with a flat bonus for every clean overcharge kill. Clearing a wave pays energy and a score bonus before the next one starts.

Look & feel

Dark conduit, neon path lighting, a teal crystal at the end that pulses when hit. Blockers glow blue at rest, gold while overcharged, gray while cooling, so the color alone tells you which towers are safe to lean on right now. Hits land as instant laser flashes with a burst of particles in the kill's color; splits get their own colored burst so you can tell a clean kill from a messy one without reading a number. All sound is synthesized with WebAudio — no audio files, unlocked on the first tap or keypress so it works on iOS.

What makes it fun

• The energy pool turns every overcharge into a two-way bet: strong right now, or a blocker you'll wish you had two waves from now.
• Splitters make "just kill it" the wrong instinct once the pressure is on — the panic response (any hit that lands) is the one that makes your problem worse.
• Nothing is hidden: tower color tells you its state, enemy health bars tell you how close a kill is, so a loss always traces back to a decision you can name.