194X — Free 4-Player Co-op Plane Shooter in Your Browser

What is it?

194X is a vertical-scrolling plane shooter in the spirit of classic 1945-style arcade games. Firing is automatic, so you focus on dodging and positioning.

Grab power, sub-weapon and ultimate items, and fly with up to three friends. Gamepads supported.

194X adds merging to airplane shooting games: hover over an ally for three seconds and your planes join, one pilot flying while the others aim the wing and tail turrets. Add 1v1 to 3v3 versus across a cloud curtain, a daily sortie and boss pattern practice, and this shmup covers co-op and rivalry alike.

194X puts up to four pilots on one tall 9:16 battlefield, drawn in 3D from a 55° tilted camera or straight top-down. Its seven stages, Pacific Front to Stratosphere, share one clock: a midboss just under a minute in, a warning at 2:11, then a named boss, from the battleship Black Iron to the four-phase Sky Fortress "194X". Clear Stage 7 and the run loops back to Stage 1 with denser, faster fire.

Each plane can be flown by only one pilot per room. Lightning is the all-rounder (100 HP), Spitfire the fastest with the smallest hitbox but 80 HP, Mitchell the slowest with 150 HP, and Corsair fires a fan of up to seven shots. Ultimates are escapes, not screen-clearing bombs; the widest covers a quarter of the field.

Co-op is built around staying close. Hover over an ally for three seconds and your planes merge: one flies while the others man wing and tail turrets they aim themselves, sharing one health pool. A downed ally drifts for six seconds; stay beside them and they return without spending a spare plane.

How to play

1. Pick a plane in the lobby and press Fly Solo. To play with friends, use Quick Join or Create Room.
2. Firing is automatic from the start. Move with the arrow keys or WASD and dodge enemy bullets.
3. Pick up P (power), S (sub-weapon), U (ultimate), H (health) and M (medal) items dropped by enemies.
4. When the ultimate gauge reaches 100, press X. Each plane has its own: Loop, Shield and Aegis protect you from bullets, while Mitchell's Carpet Bomb blasts the area ahead, clearing bullets and dealing heavy damage.
5. In co-op, stay beside a downed ally to rescue them, and overlap an ally for 3 seconds to merge into one formation.
6. Shoot down the boss at the end of a stage to move on to the next one.

Modes

Fly Solo

A private room for you alone; friends can still join mid-run with the room code shown at the bottom left. Only solo runs can pause, and only solo play works without signing in, though nothing is then saved.

Quick Join · Create Room · Join by Code

Co-op for up to four. Quick Join finds a public room; Create Room gives you a 4-character code to share. Each extra pilot adds 40% enemy health, but no extra bullets.

Daily Sortie

Stage 1 only, with a seed and plane fixed for the day (Korea time) and no upgrades, perks or continues. Scores go on a separate daily board.

Boss pattern practice

Replay a boss phase you have reached in 25-second rounds at 75%, 100% or 125% bullet speed, optionally invincible. Each round reports hits, longest safe stretch and a hit map; no rewards or ranking.

Quick match 1v1 · 2v2 · 3v3

Rated, with a separate rating per mode starting at 1,000. Teams face off across a cloud curtain, and chain-killing the neutral squadrons on your half sends counter-planes over. Ping must be 250 ms or lower.

Friendly room 1v1 · 2v2 · 3v3

Unrated, by room code; the host can turn on weakened perks. Rounds run 90 seconds plus 30 seconds of sudden death at 1.5× damage, best of three.

Good to know

• Getting shot down resets power to 1 and drops your sub-weapon. Grab the P you dropped.
• When merged, the lower-numbered player flies and the others aim turrets with their move keys. Health is shared.
• Versus is best of 3 with 90-second rounds. X is a shield and B/I (pad Y) strikes the other side; both use the same gauge.
• Daily Sortie is a solo mission that changes every day; everyone flies the same plane and rules.

At a glance

Genre

Action & multiplayer

Players

1–4

Price

Free

Available languages

Korean · English · Japanese · Chinese · Spanish

Platform

Web browser (no install)

Further reading

• 194X Power-Ups and Hangar Guide: Weapon Levels, Sub-Weapons, Parts and Perks