Cascade

CASCADE is a defend-the-core auto-survivor about building a machine and watching it come apart at the seams  in a good way.

You start by choosing three of six facets: Heat, Frost, Volt, Void, Toxin, and Beam. Those three define your entire run. Turrets orbit your core and fire on their own Heat throws explosions, Frost freezes enemies so they shatter on death, Volt arcs chain lightning across the swarm, Void drags enemies into tight clusters, Toxin spreads poison from corpse to corpse, and Beam punches a lance straight through a whole line. You don't aim and you don't move. You build.

The fun is in the chain reactions. Pull a cluster together with Void, freeze it solid, let a chain of lightning set off the shatters, watch the shatters feed an explosion, watch that explosion ignite a pool of fire. One good shot can clear a third of the screen. A strong build, late in a run, turns the whole arena into a rolling fireworks display.

You only make two kinds of decision. As you level, most upgrades apply themselves automatically  your numbers just climb while you watch. Every few levels you stop to pick a real growth card: another turret, a stacking stat, or a build-defining synergy. And right after, you choose how the strain mutates against you — the enemies get tougher, faster, or more numerous, and you decide which. It's an arms race you steer.

A run lasts five minutes. The swarm scales relentlessly the whole way, and your own mutation picks pour fuel on it, so the back half is dense and frantic. Survive to the timer and the spawns stop  you get to clear the last of the swarm for the win. Lose the core and it's over. Either way, it's about ten minutes, it runs right in your browser, and there are twenty different facet combinations to take apart.

Pick three, hold the line, and watch it cascade.