M3A Labs / Vortex Shift / Guide

Changelog

Here's what changed in Vortex Shift, newest first. The balance numbers live in the game's data files, and the guides on this site are regenerated from those same files whenever they change.

October 2026: four kinds of gem

• Gems now come in four kinds. Plain gems (a see-through gold outline) only fill the quota. Upgrade gems (yellow-green) buy ships and hangar upgrades, and cosmetic gems (pale, almost white) buy colors and trails. Of the regular gems, 30% are upgrade gems, 15% cosmetic and 55% plain, and a prism banks one of each.
• The ✦ wallet is gone: everyone starts the two new balances from zero. Daily missions pay half of each.
• Hangar upgrades cost 25% less, rounded up to the next multiple of 5.
• Five new upgrades: STATIC CHARGE (grazes charge a shield battery), CRITICAL MASS (every 10th gem fires a free Pulse), GRAZE FUSE (grazed mines blow up and take their neighbours with them), SALVAGE RIG (destroyed mines can leave a gem) and PRISM SPLITTER (more prisms, which throw gem shards onto the next orbits).
• Upgrades you already own are a little more likely to show up again in the draft (10% more, the hull repair excluded).
• GEM DETONATOR's blast is 30% wider.
• Fixed a rare wall of mines after a Chrono power-up: the game was checking the gaps at the slowed-down speed.
• The pause screen shows how many gems of each kind you've collected in the run, and the hangar shows the balance the open tab spends.
• Balance: TRACTOR BEAM now stacks up to three times and its maximum reach is 20% shorter. Even with the Magnet Coil mod it no longer reaches the gems on the neighbouring orbits. OVERCLOCK stacks up to two times. PHASE CLOAK stacks up to four times and needs three seconds to recharge.
• The music starts right away: tracks now stream instead of loading in full before the first note.

October 2026: a better tutorial

• The tutorial now runs on its own practice level with three orbits. It never ends, scores or pays out, and when you finish it (or skip it) a fresh run starts.
• The tutorial card no longer sits on top of the orbits. On phones it sits under the score and the orbits move down, on wider screens it sits to the side.
• New tutorial step: try your ship's power twice. Its cooldown is short while you practice.
• On phones, the "new mine" and "new power-up" notices are gone, since they covered the action. Events like Mine Storm and completed missions still show. The Codex has the details on everything.
• Catching a Comet now pays 2.5 times more: 500 points plus 75 per level.

September 2026: easier to learn

• A short interactive tutorial on your first run: switch orbits, collect gems, avoid mines and grab a power-up. It can be skipped, and SETTINGS can replay it.
• Every run now starts with a small how-to-play summary on the level 1 screen. Tick "Don't show this again" when you no longer need it.
• New look for mines and power-ups. All mines share the same red, spiky design, so danger is always easy to spot, while power-ups sit in glowing bubbles and gems sparkle.
• Each kind of mine now has its own center color (solid red, dark red, purplish red, orange-red), so they are easier to tell apart while the red spiky outline still says "danger".
• Safari: the fullscreen button now works on Mac and iPad. iPhone has no fullscreen for web pages, so the button there explains how to add the game to the Home Screen instead.
• The revive ad always tells you what happened: it shows LOADING AD while it waits, and says so if no ad is available or ads are blocked.
• No more walls of mines: the game now checks every new mine and never places one where you couldn't get past by switching orbits.
• Mine Storms before level 20 bring fewer extra mines (about two thirds of the full storm).

September 2026: performance and polish

• A big performance pass for low-end phones and tablets. Per-frame drawing no longer uses canvas shadow blur, the background is drawn once and cached, and the ship is pre-rendered. The slowdown of several seconds during the Overseer's warning is gone.
• Adaptive quality: if a device can't keep a smooth frame rate, the game drops its rendering resolution by one step and remembers that choice on the device.
• Revives: when a revive doesn't happen, the game now tells you why (no ad available, ad closed early, or cookies not accepted). Before, it simply looked like nothing was happening.
• On phones, fullscreen no longer kicks in again at every level start or pause. If you leave fullscreen, it stays off until you close the game.
• Layout fixes for very small screens, 300 px wide: the upgrade draft, the level intro and the achievements screen.

September 2026: the world of Vortex Shift

• Two boss tiers and a final boss. The Warden, the Vortex and the Overseer guard the early boss levels, and later they return in PRIME form with faster seekers, shockwaves and double ring blasts. The Singularity waits at the end, using all three powers and warping the orbits themselves. Beating it ends the run in victory with a +100% score bonus.
• Seven boss achievements, one per boss and per tier, plus SINGULARITY SLAYER.
• Music for each stage: a menu theme, three stage themes and a boss track of its own. Tracks only change when a level starts.
• Codex: you discover bosses the same way as ships. They stay a grey mystery until you face them.
• New MEDIKIT pickup (rare): it gives back one hull point, or bonus score if your hull is already full.
• Engine overheat: spamming the switch now heats the drive and locks switching for a moment. Once you ease off, it cools down three times faster.
• Perk rebalance: TRACTOR BEAM is now capped at four copies and, when maxed, reaches the neighbouring orbits. The Magnet power-up got a different kind of boost, and PHASE CLOAK now goes up to six copies with a fixed recharge. The collection radius also scales with the screen now, which fixes over-collection on small phones.
• Mobile: a roomier two-column menu, a separate volume for the menu music, a "both arrows = ability" option, and a soft circle that shows your boosted pickup radius.

August 2026: launch

• Vortex Shift goes live with four ships and their active abilities, 17 run upgrades, five orbit types, four mine types, six power-ups, micro-events (Gem Rush, Mine Storm, Comet), grazing, combo ranks up to SSS+ and destabilization.
• Accounts with progress stored on the server and anti-cheat checks, global daily, weekly and all-time leaderboards, the Daily Challenge, rotating missions and achievements.
• The Hangar: color schemes, trails and permanent upgrades for each ship, paid for with the gems you collect.
• Full touch support with on-screen controls, shareable run cards and support for the Android back button.
• Privacy from day one: nothing loads from third parties until you accept (strict consent mode), you can delete your account yourself, and analytics data is kept for 90 days.