Marksman

Marksman is a browser shooting-range game built as a career of one-minute courses. Each course is one minute on the firing line: plates rise across the range, you put rounds through them, and when the clock stops your score is held against that course's pass line. Clear the line and the next course opens. There is no cover and nowhere to move. It runs on a lightweight WebGL engine, needs no download, and plays with a mouse on desktop or a thumb on a phone.

The plates are what change from course to course. Dark steel plates with an orange bull are the targets: a hit near the middle pays more than one on the edge, and a far plate pays more than a near one. Plain white plates are no-shoots. Hit one and the firing line stops for three quarters of a second, you lose 250 points and your streak is gone. Movers slide sideways, so you have to aim ahead of them. Flip plates spin on their post, showing steel and then white, and you have to wait for the steel side to come round. The plate rack is a row of five small plates on a beam; only the lit plate falls, so you knock them down in order, and a round into a neighbour just clangs and breaks your streak. Clearing a whole rack pays a bonus.

Every course is built from short series, and each series puts a hit target in the top bar, for example SLOW FIRE 3/24. Reach it before the series ends and you collect a 400 point bonus. Some courses also raise a big gold gong halfway through. It takes three hits and pays 1500, but those three rounds are rounds you are not putting into the plates that are running out, so whether it is worth it depends on how the run is going.

The magazine holds twelve rounds and reloading takes real time out of the minute. Consecutive hits build a streak multiplier, and the multiplier is where big scores come from, so the plate you should not take is often worth more left alone. New plate types arrive along the way: movers on course 2, no-shoot heavy series on 3, flip plates on 5, the plate rack on 9, racks with a white plate inside on 13, and sliding flip plates on 17. Course 20, Master Class, runs all six series in one minute. After that the range keeps going: later courses are drawn from the hand-made layouts in a new order, never the same one twice in a row, with slightly faster plates and a slightly higher pass line each time round.

Every four courses passed earns a rank, from Recruit through Qualified, Marksman, Sharpshooter and Expert to Master, and a rank once earned is never lost. Each course also gives up to three stars: one for passing, two at 1.3 times the pass line and three at 1.6 times. The replay button on the end card runs the same course again if you want to chase the stars you missed. Your progress, stars and best scores are saved on your device. If you like precise aiming under time pressure, try Eight Ball or Cube Siege 3D next.

The range opens live: plates are already rising and falling while you settle your aim, and the clock only starts with your first shot. Mouse to aim (click the range once to lock the cursor), left-click or SPACE to fire, hold right-click to zoom in on the plates, R to reload. On touch: drag anywhere to aim and press FIRE to shoot; you can keep aiming with the same thumb while firing, the left button reloads and ZOOM toggles the zoom.