Star Citadel

There are a few tips and tricks that can help you become better at Star Citadel. Many of these also apply to the original Star Castle.

General tips:

• Shield rings are regenerated once all segments within a ring are destroyed, with rings migrating outwards from the cannon in the centre every time it spawns a new ring. You'll therefore want to make sure you shoot deeply through all shield rings, rather than destroying all the segments within a ring, so don't be too trigger happy.
• On each level make sure you destroy the cannon quickly, otherwise the game speeds up progressively and can become quite challenging, even on early levels.

Dealing with mines:

• Don't stay still for too long: even if the cannon can't fire at you the mines can trap you in a pincer movement.
• Watch out for mines wrapping around the screen from different directions.
• The colour of a mine gives an indication of how many hits it will take to destroy: the blue mines you see to begin with only take a single shot, but on later levels mines can take up to four hits to eliminate. Be aware of this and don't let them get too close.
• Mines won't always wrap to follow you, and will generally navigate their way around the cannon and shield rings, so if you're being chased by a particularly fast moving mine you can often escape by wrapping around the screen, or by dodging around the cannon and shield rings; often you can turn more sharply than fast moving mines as well, so use this to your advantage.

Power-ups:

• Power-ups are useful because they increase your rate of fire, allowing you to more quickly drill your way through the shield layers. They're exclusively released by mines, so it's always worth shooting mines when you get a chance. Mines can also release power-ups when they're destroyed at the end of a level.
• If you already have a power-up and you shoot a mine which releases another power-up it's generally worth collecting, even if it's not as good as the power-up you already have. This is because power-ups only last for a very short time and, on higher levels, it can be hard to break through to the cannon without some sort of power-up.
• On higher levels it can make more sense to concentrate more on collecting a power-up by attacking mines before then going on to attack the cannon directly.
• Avoid the "miaow-pow" power-up. This is actually a trap in that it will reduce your rate of fire to one bullet at a time for a number of seconds, which can mean you're easy pickings for faster mines, or mines which take multiple hits to destory.