Help
How to play, what the launch checks mean, and what to do when something does not work. Everything here describes release e9304a5003e022e6, which is the build this site is serving you.
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.
- Move with the stick, WASD, or the on-screen joystick. Dash sparingly — stamina is finite.
- Tap to pass. Hold to shoot, and let go just before the ring closes for a perfect strike.
- Press challenge to take the ball back. Sliding commits you; standing up does not.
- Deke past a defender with a flick, a half-circle or a full circle on the skill stick.
- Save your Power Strike for a clear sight of goal — hit both windows and it counts double.
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.
Keyboard & mouse
WASD or arrows to move · Shift to dash · left click to pass · hold left click to shoot · Space to challenge · Tab to switch · Q for Power Strike · Esc to pause
Hold the right mouse button and drag to deke.
Controller
Left stick to move · LB to dash · A to pass · hold A to shoot · X to challenge · RB to switch · Y for Power Strike · Start to pause
The right stick is the skill stick. A second pad joins Local Co-op.
Touch
Left joystick to move, with Pass, Shoot, Skill/Tackle, Dash, Switch and Power Strike buttons
Drag the SKILL pad on the right. Landscape is strongly recommended.
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 launchWhether 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 launchWhether 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 onlyHow 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 onlyHow 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 onlyWhether 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.
Download
The four build files coming down the wire — about 58 MB on a first visit. This is the only stage that reports a real percentage, because it is the only one the browser measures.
What a stall here means: A percentage that climbs and then stops is a network problem: a dropped connection, a captive-portal login that has expired, or a proxy or filter refusing one of the four files.
What to try: Reload. The download resumes from what your browser already has rather than starting again. If it stalls at the same percentage twice, clear the cached build below — a half-written cache entry is served back as a truncated file and stalls in exactly the same place every time.
Compile
Your browser turning the downloaded WebAssembly into machine code. It reports no progress at all, which is why this stage shows no percentage instead of a fabricated one.
What a stall here means: Sitting here for a long time on a slow or busy machine is normal, not broken — this is the most CPU-heavy moment of the whole load. Failing here, rather than waiting, almost always means WebAssembly is unavailable: an extension, an enterprise policy or a Content-Security-Policy without `wasm-unsafe-eval`.
What to try: Give it thirty seconds before deciding it is stuck. If it fails rather than waits, try a private window with extensions disabled — that is the fastest way to tell a blocked WebAssembly apart from a slow one.
Initialise
The engine starting and the first scene loading. The code is compiled by now; this is the game itself waking up.
What a stall here means: Failing here is usually memory. The player asks for a large heap, and a device with other tabs open may not have it to give.
What to try: Close other tabs and other applications, then reload. If your browser reports under 2 GB in the pre-flight checks, that warning and this failure are the same problem.
Cache
Keeping the build on this device so the next visit skips the download entirely. It runs after the game is already playable, so it can never stop you playing.
What a stall here means: Reported as skipped when the browser did not keep the build — a full disk, a private window, or a storage policy that evicts large entries.
What to try: Nothing needs fixing to play. If every visit re-downloads, free some space or leave private browsing; both restore the cache.
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 — 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 58 MB again. Nothing else is affected — 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 58 MB build and nothing else; your settings and progress are in a different store and survive it.
Cached game data
Novus Striker stores its ~58 MB build in your browser after the first play so it loads faster next time.
This clears the game's stored data. To fully reset, also clear this site's data in your browser settings.
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.
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.
Prefer theater size to fullscreen for now
Fullscreen currently upscales a fixed-size canvas rather than redrawing at your display's pixel density, so it looks softer than a maximised window at theater size — and costs more to draw. A sharp fullscreen is queued in the playable-shell phase of the roadmap.
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.
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.
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.
Quit freezes the game
Choosing Quit from the pause menu leaves the player unresponsive.
What you can do: Reload the page. Your settings are stored locally and survive the reload.
Fullscreen looks soft
Going fullscreen makes the image blurry rather than sharper.
What you can do: Theater size in a maximised window is currently sharper than fullscreen.
Power Strike text overlaps
The Power Strike prompt can collide with other on-screen text.
What you can do: None. The prompt is still readable at 16:9.
Matches are two halves
A match plays as two halves with a break, not the single timed period described here.
What you can do: None needed — the match is complete, it is just longer than intended.
The game is silent
There is no crowd, no impact sound and no music.
What you can do: None.
Still stuck
Write to striker@novusstreamsolutions.com or use the feedback page. A report that arrives with the four things below can usually be answered in one reply instead of three.
- The diagnostic report, if the game failed to start. It already contains your browser, your renderer, the stage that failed and the release id.
- If the game started and something else is wrong, tick Include my browser and build details on the feedback page instead. It fills the same facts into the email for you — release, browser, graphics adapter and the pre-flight results — so you do not have to look any of them up. It is off unless you tick it, and you can edit or delete the text before you send it.
- What you expected to happen and what happened instead — a screenshot of the loading panel is worth a paragraph.
- Whether it has ever worked on this device before.
- Whether a private window with extensions disabled behaves differently.
Ready to try again? Play Novus Striker.