Tank City Zero Day
Tank City, modernized: 8-way moves, dashes, upgrades and a boss every fifth wave.
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The same CPU core, a new kind of attack. Your tank moves and fires in eight directions and can dash straight through enemy fire. Every wave is a freshly generated arena; clear it and Patch Tuesday offers three upgrades named for real computer ideas. Chain kills for a multiplier of up to eight, and every fifth wave a zero-day breaks through the walls, to its own chiptune soundtrack.
How to play
- Move
- Arrow keys or WASD (diagonals too), a gamepad stick, or the direction pad on a touch screen.
- Fire
- Hold Space, J or Z, gamepad button A, or Fire on a touch screen.
- Dash
- Shift, K or X, gamepad button B, or Dash on a touch screen. You cannot be hit mid-dash.
- Upgrade
- After each wave, pick one of three upgrades with up and down, then Fire.
- Pause
- P, Enter or Escape, gamepad Start, or Pause on a touch screen.
- Music
- M, gamepad Select, or the Music button under the game turns the soundtrack on or off.
- Goal
- Survive as many waves as you can. The run ends when the core's integrity or your last tank is gone.
What is on the field, and the real idea behind it
Threats
Botnet drone
Fast, comes in threes and hunts you, not the core.
The real idea: A botnet is many hijacked computers taking orders from one controller.
Worm
Takes two hits and splits in two when destroyed.
The real idea: A worm copies itself across a network without anyone opening a file.
Ransomware
Armored. Its shots lock firewall into silicon.
The real idea: Ransomware encrypts your files and demands payment for the key.
Cryptominer
A turret that fires rings of shots.
The real idea: A cryptominer secretly uses your processor to earn cryptocurrency for someone else.
Zero-day
The boss of every fifth wave. Breaks through any wall.
The real idea: A zero-day is a flaw nobody has patched yet, because the makers do not know it exists.
Upgrades
Multithreading
More shots per volley, in a spread.
The real idea: Several threads let one program do several things at once.
Cache
Fire 30% faster.
The real idea: A cache keeps recent data close, so it is quick to reach again.
Pipelining
Faster shots that break deeper; level 2 breaks silicon.
The real idea: A pipeline starts the next instruction before the last one finishes.
Load balancer
Shots bounce off walls and edges.
The real idea: A load balancer spreads requests across many servers.
Encryption
Shots pass through one more enemy.
The real idea: Encryption scrambles data so only the holder of the key can read it.
Sandbox
A shield that stops one hit and recharges.
The real idea: A sandbox runs untrusted code where it cannot touch the rest of the system.
Overclock
Move faster, dash more often.
The real idea: Overclocking runs a chip faster than its rated speed.
RAID
Core integrity +1, fully repaired.
The real idea: RAID stores data across several disks, so one can fail without losing anything.
Two-factor
One extra life.
The real idea: Two-factor login asks for a second proof, like a code sent to your phone.
Hot patch
The core wall becomes silicon, every wave.
The real idea: A hot patch fixes running software without restarting it.
Terrain
Firewall
Breaks under fire, from any angle.
The real idea: Firewalls sit between networks and filter what passes.
Silicon
Stops shots; bouncing shots ricochet off it.
The real idea: Silicon is the material most computer chips are made from.
Coolant
Tanks cannot cross it; shots fly over it.
The real idea: Liquid cooling carries heat away from a chip faster than air.
Encrypted zone
Hides any tank inside it.
The real idea: Encrypted data looks like random noise to anyone without the key.
Data bus
Tanks on it move 40% faster.
The real idea: A bus is the set of shared lines that carries data between the processor, memory and devices.
Tank City Reboot