Cursader

Your cursor is the weapon. The desktop is the dungeon.

It's 1983. The GUI has just been invented, and it already hates you. Cursader is a top-down bullet-hell where you play as the mouse cursor itself — the actual pointer, nothing more — fighting off a computer that's turning its own interface against you.

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PROTOTYPE — Visi On Era (1983)

This build is an early prototype covering the first planned era: the black-and-white world of VisiOn, the first commercial GUI for the IBM PC. Everything below is playable right now, in-browser, for free.

What you can do

• Move by moving your literal cursor — it's locked to the play window so it never slips out mid-fight
• Tap to fire an auto-aimed shot at the nearest threat
• Hold and release for a bigger, piercing charged shot
• Cast one of two spells (CTRL+ALT+PURGE, an area pulse, or FIREWALL, a temporary shield) once your IP meter is full
• Drag out a marquee selection box to unleash PURGE, a screen-clearing ultimate, once that meter is completely charged

What's trying to kill you

The bottom command bar itself is the enemy. Its buttons — Help, Close, Open, Full, Frame, Options, Transfer, Stop — detach, flash a warning, and rush you. Starting wave 5, rare corrupted buttons show up in red: faster, and when you finally kill one, it doesn't just die — it counts down and detonates, so get clear before it does.

An application window sits somewhere in the arena every wave, solid and immovable — crash into it and you'll bounce off and take damage.

"Encrypted file" pickups spawn periodically; bump them before they expire for IP or a heal.

Survive as many escalating waves as you can, picking a system upgrade between each one.

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THE PLAN — GUI History, One Era at a Time

Cursader is being built as a march through real GUI history, each era its own reskinned stage with new enemies drawn from that period's actual interface conventions. None of the eras below this line are in the game yet — this is the roadmap, not a feature list.

• 1984 — Macintosh: the first mainstream GUI, bitmapped and mouse-driven
• 1985–1990 — Windows 1.0–3.0: color returns, windows multiply
• 1990s — Windows 95/98: the Start button era, the beginning of the modern desktop
• 2000s — The Web: browser toolbars, popup chains, chaos
• Modern era — flat design, cloud sync, endless updates, and a final confrontation with something that's been "helpfully" narrating your every move

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(Please keep in mind that not everything has sound yet).