Aura - the last layer

The shield destroys everything it touches. That is the problem.

AURA is a reflex game with a single rule, and that rule turns against you every few seconds. You drag the shield with your finger anywhere on screen — no buttons, no other control — and you decide what you break and what you let through.

HOW IT WORKS
• Asteroids are orange, jagged and trail behind them. Touch one: it breaks apart, scores and raises the multiplier.
• Cells are green, perfect and leave no trail. Let them cross the line: they are the only thing that gives energy back.
• The shield does not choose. Breaking a cell costs no energy, but the multiplier is gone.
• An asteroid that gets past you costs energy. A big one, four times as much. No energy, no run.

FIVE MODULES
One drops now and then, and only one can be active: picking up another replaces it.
• wide — the shield doubles its size for six seconds.
• magnet — pulls in whatever falls near you.
• slow — the atmosphere thickens and everything falls at little over half speed.
• wave — a pulse leaves the shield and breaks whatever it reaches.
• surge — it does not go off: it is stored. You fire it when the screen is full.

THE BOSS
Every two levels the zone closes and a huge hull edges in from the top. Three seconds of countdown, then it starts throwing. Here the rule flips: stopping a meteor with the shield sends it back up. What you have spent the whole run doing to defend yourself becomes, all at once, your only way to attack. No new button, no new gesture. And if you do not finish it off, it leaves anyway: you lose the bonus, not the run.

THE RUN
Twenty-second levels that keep raising the speed, ten skins that cross-fade without stopping anything, five different hulls, and an energy bonus for closing each level — finishing with room to spare scores too. Your fifteen best runs are saved with your five-character name, the level you reached and the date.

SETTINGS
Sound, vibration, reduced effects (no shake, no flash, no scanlines) and a colorblind mode that swaps green and orange for amber and blue.

NOTHING ELSE
No internet, no ads, no purchases, no account, no sign-up. AURA does not request the internet permission: it cannot send anything anywhere. Your scores stay on your phone.