How do you control Cosmic: Search and Destroy?

Your guns fire on their own, so you only steer, aim and dodge. With the mouse the ship flies toward the crosshair, as in the 2011 original; WASD or the arrow keys move while the mouse aims; a gamepad uses the left stick to move and the right stick to aim; on touch the left thumb moves and the right thumb aims. Space, Shift, right click, A or RB dashes, and E, F, Y or LB fires your special.

What should I buy first in the hangar?

Damage and Extra guns pay back fastest in the early areas. Once Area 2 is cleared, a missile pod and a shield layer change how the game plays, and Salvage rights makes every later coin worth more. Spend your coins every visit — the catalog is deep and an unspent balance does nothing for you in Area 7.

What happens when my ship is destroyed?

You keep every coin and upgrade and can relaunch any area you have reached. Dying in the same area again gives your next attempt emergency hull plating, so no area turns into a wall.

Is Cosmic: Search and Destroy free to play?

Yes. Cosmic: Search and Destroy is free to play directly in your browser on Legitsauce. No download, no signup, no in-app purchases required.

Cosmic: Search and Destroy — Free Vertical Shooter Browser Game

About the game

Cosmic: Search and Destroy grew out of a 2011 Flash shoot-'em-up from Bemi Game Studios, and it keeps that game's soul: the original sprites, the original music, the five original areas and their Gunship, Battleship and Dreadnought bosses. Your guns fire on their own, so your job is to fly — weave through asteroid fields, critter swarms and fat gunships, sweep up the coins they drop, and spend them before the next launch.

Past Area 5 the war gets wider: a minefield, an ion storm that blacks out the screen, gravity wells that bend every bullet, a convoy to escort and a turret gauntlet — ten areas in all before the Rift, where the three-phase Cosmic Leviathan waits. Choose Easy, Normal or Hard (Hard opens after your first win), collect medals as you go, and once the Leviathan is down, Endless mode turns the game into a pure score attack in a fully upgraded ship.

Screenshots

Area 8 — gravity wells bend every bullet
The hangar — 33 upgrades over four tabs
Area 9 — keep the convoy alive
The Rift — the Cosmic Leviathan

How to play

Controls

Mouse: the ship flies toward the crosshair and faces it, as in the 2011 original.
Keyboard: WASD or the arrow keys move; the mouse aims.
Gamepad: left stick moves, right stick aims, Start pauses.
Touch: left thumb moves, right thumb aims; DASH and SPECIAL buttons sit under your thumbs.
Dash: Space, Shift, right click, A or RB — a burst with a moment of invulnerability.
Special: E, F, Y or LB once the meter in the bottom-left glows gold.
Pause: Esc, P, Start or the on-screen pause button.

The hangar

Between areas you land in the hangar. Damage, Extra guns, Fire rate, Max hull and Engine each run ten tiers, and every few areas a new rack opens: missile pods, wingman drones, flank cannons, flak, a piercing beam and chain lightning on the Weapons tab; shields, armor plating, nanobot repair, a bullet reflector and dash upgrades on Defense; coin magnet, salvage rights and an emergency warp on Systems. The Specials tab holds the smart bomb, overdrive and black-hole mine, plus passive modules for up to three slots. Every row previews its effect before you buy, and Q/E or LB/RB flip between tabs.

Tips & strategy

When the scrolling stops, the area won't continue until every enemy on screen is destroyed (asteroids don't count).
Ramming costs you a hit and shoves you clear — shoot first, and save the dash for bullets you can't avoid.
Losing your ship isn't the end: you keep your coins and upgrades, and each repeat attempt at the same area adds emergency hull plating.

Fullscreen

Hit the Fullscreen button in the bar above the play area to expand. To exit, press Esc (or swipe down from the top edge on touch) and tap the Exit button that slides in.

Pilot's notebook

Core loop

Cosmic: Search and Destroy is a shooter about positioning, not trigger discipline. Because the guns never stop, every second you spend holding a lane in front of a swarm is damage dealt, and every second spent backed into a corner is coins left floating off the screen. Chains matter too: kill quickly and the multiplier climbs to x8, but one hit knocks it down a level.

Spending well

The early areas reward raw output, so Damage and Extra guns first. From Area 3 on, coins are worth more, and the second rack of the hangar is where builds start to diverge — a missile pod covers what your aim misses, a shield layer forgives one mistake, and Salvage rights compounds for the rest of the campaign. Buy something every visit; a hoard does nothing for you in the ion storm.

Reading the late areas

Each new area asks for a tool. Flankers from behind want flank cannons or drones, the frigate lines in the gauntlet melt under the piercing beam, and missiles shrug off the gravity wells that bend your bullets. The ion storm is about memory: note where the snipers sit before the screen goes dark, and dash across their red lock-on lines.

The Leviathan

The finale is tuned for a nearly complete hangar. If it is winning, the answer is usually the build rather than more caution: fill the defensive racks, keep a special charged for its third phase, and remember that each failed attempt still pays coins toward the last few upgrades.

Credits

Game, code, music and sound effects by Bemi Game Studios (2011 original, 2026 version) for legitsauce.com. Ship sprites by Skorpio (OpenGameArt), licensed CC BY-SA 3.0. The edited sprites and the new enemy art adapted from them are shared under the same licence. Fonts: Press Start 2P and Exo 2 (SIL Open Font License). Made with Godot Engine.

Cosmic: Search and Destroy — a free vertical shooter with a 33-upgrade hangar