XANTHREL
WEAPONLESS
You cannot shoot – but you can ram, dodge, hide in gas clouds and lure pursuers into asteroids, mines or the rift.
XANTHREL
COLLECT. SURVIVE. JUMP.
A weaponless spaceship roguelite. Collect golden Xanthrel dust, choose modules, dodge, hide – and jump through the VOID RIFT into the next stage.
Play the free demo now (stages 1 to 4). The description below shows the whole game.
DEMO · ALPHA 0.20.0Early version: the game is still growing, values and content may change.Early version: content may still change.
THE GAME
You fly the VIPER, a small ship without a single weapon, through the dangers of the solar system. You cannot shoot. You survive by flying, dodging, hiding – and by what you collect.
Every run leads through eight stages, from Mercury via Venus, Earth and Mars to Neptune. At the end of every stage a wave battle waits. After that the Endless Zone begins: beyond Neptune the danger level rises every minute, and the journey continues outward – past Pluto and the heliopause to the Orion Nebula and on to Andromeda. Until your ship is destroyed.
No two runs are alike: modules, drones, enemies and events are shuffled anew every time. Your progress, however, stays: with the VOIDMARK from your runs you upgrade permanently in the hangar. That is why XANTHREL is a roguelite and not a roguelike.
- 01COLLECT Golden Xanthrel dust drifts in space. Nose in slowly – full thrust blows it away.
- 02CHOOSE When the bar is full, the game pauses: one of three module cards makes your ship stronger.
- 03JUMP Every card fills the rift tension. When it is full, a horn sounds and four waves of enemies attack. Survive them all and the VOID RIFT stays open, a glowing tear like a galaxy seen edge-on. It also sucks in meteorites and dust.
- 04SURVIVE Seeker drones, mines, comets and solar storms are waiting. You take your modules and all your drones along into the next stage.
- STAGE 1MERCURY
- STAGE 2VENUS
- STAGE 3EARTH
- STAGE 4MARS
- STAGE 5JUPITER
- STAGE 6SATURN
- STAGE 7URANUS
- STAGE 8NEPTUNE
- THENENDLESS ZONE
FEATURES
OVER 130 MODULES AND UPGRADES
From bronze to legendary: shields, magnets, repair, shockwave, cloak field, decoy body and more. Every card is a module (something new) or an upgrade (improves what you already have), with a short sentence and the comparison before ➔ after. Some values are rolled anew with every card. Your drones also come as module cards, and every drone gets its own upgrade cards.
SEVEN DRONES
Collector, defense, combat, shield and shadow drone, the parasite and the scout drone – you get them as module cards. They fly as wingmen beside you, and upgrade cards improve each one. With an upgrade even a second combat drone, collector drone or a second parasite joins you. The shadow drone wraps your ship in a veil. With the PARASITE HACK card the parasite can even hack an enemy, which then fights for you. On top comes BUDDY, a companion drone with a photon beam that every ship always has with it. The scout warns and marks for all other drones.
TWELVE ENEMY TYPES
Seeker drones scan for you with a red cone. Interceptors, minelayers, hunters, recon ships, repair drones, dust thieves, kamikaze drones, needler swarms, snatchers that only hunt your drones, the sniper who aims from far away with a red line, and the heavy cruiser. Destroyed ones sometimes drop loot.
A LIVING SPACE
Asteroids, debris fields, minefields, comets, meteorite showers, solar storms and gravity anomalies that pull you into their wake.
STAGE CONTRACTS
Two to three hard goals per stage – salvage wrecks, pass by a hair, destroy a cruiser. Complete one and you immediately get an epic or legendary card.
THE HANGAR
In the orbital shipyard you choose ship, pilot, relic and drones before the run: 14 ships and a 15th that you unlock first, 10 pilots, 19 relics and seven drones. You buy a lot with VOIDMARK from your runs, some things you only unlock through contracts. At the top of the hangar you set the difficulty: ROOKIE, VETERAN, DOOMED or NIGHTMARE (the last one unlocks once you have mastered stage 8).
ENDLESS ZONE
Beyond Neptune it gets harder every minute. How far will you get? A run only counts once the ship is destroyed – your best runs end up on the high score list. Every difficulty level has its own high score list.
FOUR WAVES
Each of the eight stages ends with a wave battle: four waves of drones, hunters, needler swarms, kamikazes and cruisers fly in from outside the screen. The next wave only comes when the last one is completely defeated. With stronger equipment more enemies come. After the victory you choose one of three rewards: a wave relic, a strong card or a supply package.
MODTREE
A tree with 24 permanent mods in three arms: ship, drones and economy. Once bought, a mod applies in every run. You unlock the higher levels by winning the wave battles.
RELICS CHANGE RULES
A relic changes how you play instead of just raising numbers: Swarm Pact passes hits on to your drones, Ignition Core makes destroyed drones explode, Shock Mantle drops timer mines when you boost.
GERMAN AND ENGLISH
The whole game is available in German and in English. You switch the language in the settings, and it applies immediately.
Also: save and resume your game, a how-to-play guide with moving images right in the game, controls with keyboard, mouse or controller, freely rebindable.
IMAGES
Click an image to open it large. Also the five pages of the orbital shipyard and two scenes from the wave battle.
VIDEO
OVERVIEW VIDEO COMING SOON · Click to load, nothing is loaded from YouTube beforehand
DOWNLOAD
DEMO ALPHA 0.20.0
Free · for Linux and Windows (64 bit)
The demo (stages 1 to 4) is available right now. The full version follows later. The demo has three ships (VIPER, FALCON, CONDOR), two pilots and three drones, and ends after stage 4. It saves to its own folder and leaves your full-version save untouched.
LINUX
- File
- XANTHREL-Demo-0.20.0-alpha-linux-x86_64
- Size
- 107 MB
- SHA-256
- f2afdec82c24bc30348215e83da8d29a997e07ac63d600252b2ae5927cbddb5d
Starting on Linux: The file is a single program. Mark it as executable (right-click → Properties → Permissions, or chmod +x XANTHREL-Demo-0.20.0-alpha-linux-x86_64 in a terminal) and start it.
WINDOWS
- File
- XANTHREL-Demo-0.20.0-alpha-windows-x64.exe
- Size
- 143 MB
- SHA-256
- 04810303cb216e1d1bd92a53954fe2164845e98bb09ce735e8405e1ffe719d77
Note on Windows: The game is not signed. SmartScreen may therefore warn you (“Windows protected your PC”). Click “More info” → “Run anyway” to start it. With the SHA-256 sum you can check that the file is unchanged.
You can also find the game on itch.io (free, for Linux and Windows).
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
| System | Windows 10 or 11 · Linux (current distribution) · each 64 bit (x86_64) |
|---|---|
| Processor | 64 bit, 2 cores |
| Memory | 4 GB |
| Graphics | OpenGL 3.3 (older and integrated graphics chips too) |
| Disk space | about 200 MB free |
| Screen | from 1280 × 720, fullscreen |
| Input | Keyboard, mouse or controller |
CONTROLS
| ACTION | KEYBOARD | MOUSE | CONTROLLER |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thrust | W | Left click | RT |
| Brake | S | Right click | LT |
| Steer | A D | Mouse pointer (the ship turns toward the pointer) | left stick |
| Boost | Shift | Wheel click | Y |
| Action | Enter | Side button 1 | B |
| Radar zoom | + − | Mouse wheel | D-pad ▲ ▼ |
| Pause | Esc | PAUSE button bottom right | Start |
| Silent pause (no menu) | P | – | – |
| Camera closer / farther (POV) | ▲ ▼ arrow keys | – | – |
Your ship triggers the shockwave, the decoy body and the emergency shield on its own, so you do not need a key for them.
Keys, mouse buttons and controller buttons can be rebound in the game under CONTROLS (any action to any mouse button, including the wheel and side buttons). Mouse steering can be switched off in the settings. Fixed are pause (Esc), silent pause (P) and the arrow keys for POV.