Little orange o’s come in from the edges and start chewing
They arrive a few at a time, drift toward the nearest search result, and settle on it. Then the result’s health bar starts draining. Nothing dramatic happens for the first couple of seconds, which is long enough for most people to sit there watching instead of doing anything about it.
Click one and it flinches. Click it three times and it pops. That’s the whole defence system, and it is not enough on its own.
the losing move
Trying to save every result. You can’t. The swarm scales with time, not with how well you’re doing, so the only score that goes up reliably is your kill count. Once people realise that, they stop defending and start farming.
when the page is gone
The survivors form up into two letters in the middle of the screen. GG. It’s a StarCraft habit, typed at the end of a match whether you won or lost, and the swarm is a StarCraft reference too, which is why the whole thing hangs together.
double rush
The second button doubles the spawn rate immediately. Results last about forty seconds instead of two minutes. It’s the version to try once you know you’re going to lose anyway and just want a higher number in the kill counter.
other tricks with the same appetite
Destruction has a few flavours here. thanos snap takes out half the results instantly with no fight at all, which is either merciful or worse depending on your temperament. black hole easter egg drags everything into a single point until nothing is left standing.
If you want to shoot back properly, space invaders gives you a cannon and a descending grid of aliens. google block breaker puts a paddle under a wall of bricks made from the interface.
And for something with a maze and a chase instead of a swarm, google pac-man is still the best-built game in this whole collection.