PERIHELIA

From the Devs

One ring. One gap.

PERIHELIA is an arcade dodger cut down to a single orbit. You hold one line around the center. Walls close in from the dark, each with one gap in it. Turn, thread it, survive the next one. That is the whole game, and it keeps asking for one more run.

Four ways to play the same ring

• CLASSIC Pure reflex. The speed ramps up, the walls stack, nothing else gets in your way.
  
• TIME The world moves only when you do. Rotation is the flow of time: turn forward to fast-forward, pull back to rewind. The music bends with you, and if you stop it sags into a drone.
  
• COLOR The gap has a color, and you only pass if your ship matches it. Half a second of thought lands between you and the wall.
  
• MUSIC The walls are not random. Each one sits on a beat, placed from the song's own clock, so the pattern you play is the track. Quiet sections are calm, the drop is a wave. Nothing kills you here: a miss costs energy and combo, and the song plays out.

Build the multiplier, tilt the world

Clean passes build a combo, and the combo drives a multiplier from x1 to x8. Every tier you reach shows. The play field tilts, the camera moves with it, the neon burns hotter. Break the combo and it settles back down. You can read your own run without looking at a single number.

Built to be replayed

• A separate leaderboard for each mode, so every run counts somewhere.
  
• Four difficulty levels. They change how wildly the gaps swing, not only how narrow they are.
  
• Keyboard and gamepad, with prompts that match the pad you plugged in.
  
• Windows and Linux, handhelds like the Steam Deck included.

Made by hand

No sprite sheets and no stock art. Every arc, ship and spark is drawn in code. The soundtrack is original, and every track carries its own beatmap and its own backdrop. The song is the level.