Help

How to play in 30 seconds

The same five lines the game page prints while the build is downloading. They are enough for a first match; everything else is detail.

1. 1Move with the left stick, WASD, arrows or the touch joystick; dash uses finite stamina.
2. 2Tap pass or shoot for a quick action. Hold and release near full for a perfect action; overholding is unsafe.
3. 3Tap the challenge control to shove and hold it to commit to a charged tackle.
4. 4Use right-stick gestures, right-mouse drag or the touch skill pad for cuts, turns, spins and shielding.
5. 5A full meter starts the three-part Power sequence: power lock, accuracy lock, then the live keeper contest.

Controls, before you launch

All three schemes play the whole game. Nothing is locked to a controller, and the skill stick runs the identical gesture recogniser on each of them.

The full move list, action by action and input by input, is on features. Controls cannot be remapped inside the game yet. That gap, and the others, are named on accessibility.

What is checked before anything downloads

The game page runs these against your browser before it fetches a single byte, and shows you what it found. Two of the five can stop a launch; the other three are warnings, because a working browser is allowed to decline to answer them.

• WebGL 2

  Can stop a launch

  Whether this browser can create a WebGL 2 drawing context, which is what the game renders every frame into.

  If it comes back badly: Update to a current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. If hardware acceleration is switched off in your browser's settings, turn it back on. That alone removes WebGL 2 on some machines.

• WebAssembly

  Can stop a launch

  Whether an eight-byte empty module actually compiles. The whole game is compiled to WebAssembly, so this is not optional.

  If it comes back badly: WebAssembly is usually disabled by an extension, an enterprise policy or a hardened profile rather than by the browser itself. Try a private window with extensions off, or a different browser.

• Device memory

  Warning only

  How much RAM the device reports. The player asks for a large heap, so anything under 2 GB is worth a warning.

  If it comes back badly: Close other tabs and other applications before you launch. Only Chromium browsers report this at all, so an "unknown" here means the browser declined to answer, not that anything is wrong.

• Storage for the cache

  Warning only

  How much storage this origin may use, so the build can be kept for next time instead of being downloaded again.

  If it comes back badly: Clear the cached build below, or free space on the device. A launch still works without it; every visit just re-downloads the build.

• Input device

  Warning only

  Whether a mouse, a touchscreen or a controller was seen. Reported only, never enforced.

  If it comes back badly: A controller does not announce itself to a browser until you press a button on it, so press A or Start and the check flips to ready. This can never stop a launch.

A check can be wrong (an extension that stubs a browser API, a hardened profile, an enterprise policy), so the gate keeps a Play anyway button rather than turning you away on a guess.

When the launch fails

Loading is reported as four separate stages rather than one bar, because the four fail for completely different reasons. Find the one that stopped and read its row.

The diagnostic report

When a launch fails, the page offers a diagnostic report. It is opt-in twice over: it is not built until you ask to see it, and it is not sent anywhere at all, because there is no endpoint behind that button. The whole report is printed on screen so you can read it before deciding whether to paste it into an email.

Error code

A short token for what went wrong, so fifty identical failures read as one bug rather than fifty conversations.

Failed stage

Which of the four load stages was in flight when it stopped, or the pre-check, if it never started.

Release

The content-addressed build you were served, so the failure can be reproduced against that exact one.

Cache version

The version of the game's cache database on this device. A stale one explains a load that used to work.

When

The time, so two reports from one session can be put in order.

Browser

Your browser's user-agent string: which browser and which version. No account, no id, nothing that names you.

Renderer

The graphics adapter the browser is willing to name. Most WebGL problems are decided here.

GPU vendor

Who made that adapter. Together with the renderer this is what a driver-specific bug is identified by.

MessageOnly when there is one

The loader's own error text, when it produced one.

The results of the five pre-flight checks ride along at the bottom, so a reply does not have to start by asking for them. Nothing in the report identifies you: no address, no id, no browsing history and none of the contents of your storage.

Browser support

There is no supported-browser list, because a list of names is a worse answer than the two facts underneath it. A browser runs Novus Striker if it can create a WebGL 2 context and compile WebAssembly. Every current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari can do both, on desktop and on mobile.

• Desktop is the better experience, not the only one. A phone plays the whole game with on-screen controls; landscape is strongly recommended.
• Private windows work but do not remember anything. The build is re-downloaded on every visit and in-game settings do not survive the window closing.
• Content blockers are the usual culprit when a browser that should work does not. Disabling them for this site, or opening it once with extensions off, distinguishes a blocked launch from a broken one in about ten seconds.

Saving, storage and clearing the cache

Everything is stored in this browser, on this device. There is no account and no cloud save, which means nothing to sign up for and nothing to lose to a forgotten password, and also that clearing this site's data is permanent.

• The game build

  UnityCache (IndexedDB)

  Clearing it means the next launch downloads the full 87 MB again. Nothing else is affected, because it is a copy of files this site serves, not anything of yours.

• In-game settings and progress

  IndexedDB, written by the game itself

  Your settings, your striker and your records live here, in this browser, on this device. There is no account and no cloud save, so clearing all site data resets them and they cannot be recovered.

• Your cookie choice

  nss-consent

  Clearing it brings the consent banner back on the next visit. Nothing else changes.

• Your theme choice

  nss-theme

  Clearing it returns the site to the light theme. The switch is in the header on every page.

Clearing the cached build is the first thing to try for a launch that stalls in the same place twice: a partially written cache entry is handed back as a truncated file every time. It removes the 87 MB build and nothing else; your settings and progress are in a different store and survive it.

Every cookie and storage key on this site, and what each is for, is listed on cookies & storage.

Making it run better

In the order they make a difference. The first one is worth more than the other four together.

1. 01

   Close other tabs before you launch

   This is the single biggest lever and it costs nothing. The player reserves a large block of memory at startup; another tab holding a video or a heavy web app is competing for the same pool, and losing that race is what an initialise failure looks like.

2. 02

   Use fullscreen for the clearest phone view

   Fullscreen gives the pitch the entire safe display area and redraws the Unity canvas at a bounded 2x device-pixel density. It hides the website toolbar while playing and keeps one labelled Exit fullscreen button in the safe top-right corner.

3. 03

   Play on a wired or strong connection for the first launch only

   The download happens once. After the cache stage completes, later visits start from the copy on your device and the network stops mattering at all.

4. 04

   Turn camera shake down

   In the game's Settings menu. It is the one motion setting the build ships with, and turning it off both reduces motion and removes a per-frame cost.

5. 05

   On a phone, play in landscape and resize the touch pads

   Landscape gives the full tactical view of the pitch. The Settings menu adjusts touch-control scale and opacity, so the pads can be made bigger for accuracy or smaller to uncover the pitch.

Common problems

Defects we have reproduced in the build you can play today. If you hit one of these it is us, not you. The cause of each and the release history are on status, and what is queued against them is on the roadmap.

• Touch item use is not available

  A touch player can collect an item, but the touch overlay has no item-use control.

  What you can do: Use a keyboard or controller when playing with items enabled.