Question 1

What is Andromeda: The Shattered Chain?

Accepted Answer

Andromeda: The Shattered Chain is a free browser brick-breaker built on Greek myth. You play Perseus on the black shore, holding a bronze shield and a shard of the Gorgon's reflected light. Every chapter is a reef of coral seals between you and the chain that holds Andromeda to the cliff. Break the seals, keep the shard alive, and at the end of each act face one coil of Cetus. There are thirty chapters across four acts, plus an endless mode called The Tide Without End.

Question 2

How do I control the shield?

Accepted Answer

Move the pointer or drag your finger left and right: the bronze shield follows, and the shard rests on it until you let go. Click, tap or press Space to loose the shard. On a keyboard the left and right arrows, or A and D, move the shield, Space launches, P or Escape pauses, M mutes, and R restarts the chapter. Where the shard lands on the shield decides the rebound angle: the outer edge sends it away steeply, the centre sends it almost straight up. That is the whole skill of the game.

Question 3

What are the different bricks?

Accepted Answer

Coral is rose-coloured and breaks in one hit. Shell is pale and takes two hits. Obsidian is dark violet with gold veins and takes three. Seal crystals glow cyan, take two hits and pay double score. Steel chain anchors never break at all, so you have to play around them. From the second act some coral is replaced by shell or obsidian, and the last chapters mix every kind in the same wall.

Question 4

What happens when the tide rises?

Accepted Answer

From chapter nine onward the reef is on a clock. A red warning pulses three seconds before each surge, then the entire wall drops one row toward your shield. If any brick crosses the dashed danger line above the shield, the chapter ends immediately. The surge never adds new bricks, so the wall gets shorter as it gets closer, and when only three seals remain the chain gives way and they crumble on their own. Clear the lowest row first, and never let a surge catch you aiming.

Question 5

What do the falling gifts do?

Accepted Answer

Catch them with the shield. Wide Aegis makes the shield half again as wide for twelve seconds. Gorgon Split turns every shard in play into three. Slow Tide makes the shard heavy and readable for ten seconds. Bronze Edge lets the shard pass through bricks without bouncing for eight seconds. A heart restores one shield, up to five. A gold star is worth five hundred points. They fall quickly and expire, so take them early or let them go.

Question 6

How do score and stars work?

Accepted Answer

Every brick you break adds to a chain multiplier that rises while you keep breaking and resets after a second and a half without a hit; the ceiling is eight. Seal crystals pay double, boss hits pay thirty, and clearing a chapter pays six hundred plus one hundred and eighty for every shield you kept. You begin each chapter with three shields. Stars are simply the shields you finished with: three stars for a flawless clear, two for one lost, one for a clear with a single shield left.

Question 7

Is there an endless mode, and does it work on a phone?

Accepted Answer

The Tide Without End unlocks when you clear chapter eight. Each wave is a fresh seeded reef with more armour, a faster shard and a narrower shield, and you carry your shields from wave to wave, gaining one for every reef you clear. The run ends when the sea takes the last one. The game is completely free, with no download, no install and no ads inside it. It runs in any modern browser on desktop, tablet and phone, with a mouse, a finger or a keyboard, and all progress is stored locally in your own browser.

Choose a chapter

Chapter 1 — The First Link

The first link gives way

The chain holds

Paused

How to break a chain

Wave 1