Network Exterminator

Network Exterminator is a shooter in which the enemy is a self-replicating network alien.

It hangs from a membrane at the top of the screen and grows down towards your ship — and its growth rules come from network science. Scale-free growth breeds hubs. Small-world growth hides shortcuts. Proximity growth knits a dense mesh. Hub-and-spoke growth hangs everything on a few hubs. The bigger a node, the more links it has.

Shoot from below. Anything no longer connected to the membrane falls away at once. Each species has a different weak point, and the weak point comes from the structure: find the cut that brings the most of it down. Hold the beam for a decisive column cut, or chip away with the machine gun.

In Training you meet the five species one by one. In Deploy you face the Mutant: it switches species every 20 seconds at shifting spots, its leftover colonies keep growing by their own rules, and after two rounds it starts learning to send more often the species that last longest against you.

How to play

• ← →: move
• Hold Z: machine gun (a bullet stops at the first edge or node it hits)
• Hold X, release when full: piercing beam (destroys a whole column)
• P: pause · M: sound · R: retry · T: title · L: English / 日本語

Click the game first so that it receives keyboard input. A keyboard is required; not for mobile. The game plays sound.

Design note
A design note (PDF, in the downloads) explains how each rule was designed from ideas in network science: which mechanism each species keeps from a known model and what the game adds, why each species breaks differently, and the bandit-style rule the Mutant uses to learn.

Cite / archive
Ishida, A. (2026). Network Exterminator (Version 1.0.0) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23291903

Licence
© 2026 Atsushi Ishida. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — you may share the unmodified game for non-commercial purposes with attribution.

AI assistance
The code and documentation drafts were written with Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) under the author's direction. The concept, design decisions and play-testing are the author's.

ネットワーク駆除局（日本語）

ネットワーク型の宇宙生物を撃つシューティング。敵は画面の上の膜からぶら下がり、自機に向かって育ってくる。その育ち方はネットワーク科学のモデルの仕組みから来ている。スケールフリーはハブを生み、スモールワールドは近道を隠し、近接は密な網を編み、ハブアンドスポークは少しのつながりに全部をぶら下げる。点の大きさはつながりの数。

下から撃つ。膜から切り離された部分は、まとめて落ちる。種ごとに急所が違い、その急所は網の構造から来る。いちばん多く落ちる切り所を探せ。溜めた貫通弾で縦一列を断つか、マシンガンで削るか。

「研修」では 5 種と一つずつ戦う。「出動」では変異種が相手。20 秒ごとに場所を変えて別の種に変わり、残った前の種もそれぞれの法則で育ち続ける。2 巡すると、プレイヤーが崩せずに長く残った種ほど多く出すように学習し始める。

操作：← → で移動、Z（押しっぱなし）でマシンガン、X を押しっぱなしで溜めて離すと貫通弾、P 一時停止、M 音、R やり直し、T タイトル、L で英語と日本語の切り替え。最初にゲームをクリックしてください。キーボードが必要です。音が出ます。

利用条件：© 2026 Atsushi Ishida（石田淳）、CC BY-NC-ND 4.0。