Vertebra

The Empire built its city from the bones of a serpent. One skull woke up.

VERTEBRA is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up roguelite in the spirit of Saint Dragon. You are a flying dragon skull, and your body is your build: every enemy you destroy can become a new vertebra chained behind you.

• Plates soak up bullets, turrets fire with your breath, mirror scales send shots back, bombs explode, medics heal their neighbours, amplifiers speed up the turret behind them, and relics are torn from the bosses.
• Block bullets with your spine, curl it into a shield around the skull, whip the tail, shed it as a bomb, and when the Charge is full unleash a screen-wide Burst.
• The order of the segments matters: rearrange them at the shrines, fuse them at the forge, buy them from smugglers.

Features

• 6 regions, from the Foundry Coast to a secret sixth one
• 30 enemy types, 6 elites and 6 bosses
• 50+ segments and relics, with adjacency combos and bone sets
• 6 playable Skulls, each with its own breath and Burst
• Story / Standard / Arcade difficulty and 10 Heat modifiers
• Daily Run, Arcade Gauntlet and Practice modes
• Remappable controls, gamepad support, colour-blind bullet sets, CRT filter

Controls

Move: Arrows / WASD  ·  Breathe fire: Space / J  ·  Curl: K  ·  Brace: L  ·  Whip: I  ·  Burst: U  ·  Shed the tail: hold O  ·  Focus: Shift  ·  Pause: Esc / P

Runs in the browser: Chrome or Edge on a desktop (WebGPU, with a WebGL 2 fallback). Click the game once, then press any key to start.

📖 Read the instruction manual (PDF, 35 pages): segments, relics, bosses, combos and everything else.

More games at waldtier.com.

Changelog

• Update 1: added mobile controls.