Controls
Hold the phone or iPad in landscape, either way round.
Steering
Tilt to steer. Lower the right edge to turn right, and tip the top edge away from you to dive, like pushing a flight stick forward. However you’re holding the device when the game starts, or when you come back to it, counts as flying straight. Tap with two fingers to make the way you’re holding it now the new straight and level.
Or use the stick. Put a thumb anywhere on the left half of the screen: a stick appears where it lands, and dragging steers. While you hold it, it takes over from tilt.
Let go and the ship flies straight, rolling back to level.
Firing
Hold anywhere on the right half to fire. Each new tap fires at once, and holding keeps firing. A finger near the top center of the screen, where DOCK and WARP appear, never fires, so reaching for DOCK and missing doesn’t shoot the station. Neither does a tap on the damage control line.
Throttle
The bar on the right edge is the throttle. Slide a finger up it to speed up and down to slow down. Its full height runs from stopped to full speed, and its fill shows the setting. The ship takes a few seconds to change speed, so slow down before a dense patch, not in it.
Buttons
| Button | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| View | Top left, first | Looks straight back, and again to look ahead. See Looking back. |
| Map | Top left | Opens the long range sector map. Time stops. |
| Log | Top left | Opens every message of the run. Time stops. |
| Pause | Top left | Stops time and shows the pause screen. |
| Fly | On the map and log | Closes them and goes back to flying. |
| DOCK, WARP, ABORT | Top center, only when they apply | DOCK while you’re lined up on a station’s bay, WARP while a destination in another sector is set, ABORT while the hyperdrive spools up. |
The pause screen shows the system’s code and has RESUME, HOW TO PLAY, SETTINGS and QUIT TO TITLE, which keeps the run for CONTINUE. The station screen has the same pause button.
Looking back
The view button turns the view to look straight back, as the original Star Raiders’ aft view did. Steering still turns the ship as it does looking ahead, so the view swings the other way. Only the rear gun fires: one photon at a time, under the ship. No markers show, only the crosshair, so you find pursuers by eye. The view turns to the front by itself for a hyperwarp, for docking and when the ship is destroyed.
Switching systems off
Tap an icon on the damage control line, at the bottom right, to switch that system off, and again to switch it back on. Four switch:
- Photons: no gun fires.
- Engines: the ship can’t speed up, slow down or turn. It coasts on as it was going, with everything else running, and WARP can’t engage.
- Shields: they drop, every hit gets through, and they draw no energy. Switched on again, they recharge from nothing.
- Tracking computer: no brackets, LOCK, aim assist, collision warnings or trench markers, and no energy drawn.
A system switched off is gray on the line, stays off through docking and jumps, and is saved with the run. Why switch one off? To save energy, or for a challenge (see USE THE FORCE).
Settings
Settings are on the title and pause screens and are kept between runs.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| TILT or STICK ONLY | Stick only ignores tilt completely. |
| Sensitivity and dead zone | How far you tilt for how much turn, and how much tilt is ignored. |
| Invert pitch | Tip the top edge away to climb instead. |
| Left-handed | Mirrors the screen: the stick on the right, fire on the left, the throttle on the left edge. |
| RECALIBRATE | Makes however you hold the device when you next fly count as level. |
| MUSIC | The combat music’s volume, down to off. |
| SOUND | The sound effects’ volume, down to off. |
| HAPTICS | Turns off what you feel on an iPhone. |
| Tips | Brings the first-run tips back. |
| RESET | Puts everything back. |
Accessibility
- Larger Text (Dynamic Type) enlarges the sector map, the station screen and the end of the run. The flight HUD stays fixed.
- VoiceOver reads each HUD readout and component by name and value, each sector on the sector map with what’s in it, and the station screen’s rows.
- Reduce Motion stops hits from shaking the view and makes the hit flash fainter. Dim Flashing Lights makes the flashes fainter too.