Stuck? Start here.
Answers to the questions we get, and where to write when yours is not here.
Found a bug? Tell us the device, the mode, the wave, and what you were doing. A screenshot or a clip helps more than anything else.
Controls
Phone and tablet, landscape. The left half of the screen is a floating joystick: push far to sprint. The right half is drag to look. Buttons cover fire, aim, jump, dash, hook, reload, grenade and katana. The weapon bar shows the active weapon: tap it to fan out and pick, swipe it to cycle.
Gamepad. Plug one in or pair it and the game switches over. Sticks move and look, triggers fire and aim, the face buttons cover jump, dash, hook and reload.
Keyboard and mouse. WASD moves, Shift sprints, Space jumps (again in the air for a double jump, against a wall for a wall jump), C or Ctrl slides (in the air: dash), Q or E fires the hook, left click fires, right click aims or blocks with the katana, R reloads, F is a quick slash, G throws a grenade, 1 to 5 or the wheel pick a weapon, Esc pauses, M toggles music.
Touch sensitivity, auto-fire, aim assist, haptics and quality live in Settings on the title screen.
Purchases and restoring
Fighters, crown packs, the season pass and the bundles are bought through the App Store or Google Play. They are tied to that store account, not to Pen Fire, so there is nothing to sign up for. Reinstalled or switched phones? Open Shop and tap Restore purchases while signed into the same store account. Fighters and the pass come back; crowns you had already spent do not.
Refunds go through the store you bought from: Apple's report-a-problem page or the Google Play order history. We cannot refund a store purchase ourselves.
Progress and saves
Your fighters, upgrades, crowns, missions, season level and stats are saved on the device. There is no account and no cloud save in this version, so deleting the app deletes the progress with it. Purchases can always be restored, as above.
Performance
If the game reloads or stutters on an older phone, set Quality to Balanced in Settings. The renderer draws every frame twice, once for the ink and once for the paper, and that is the setting that halves the work.
Friends and multiplayer
Add a friend with their code from the Friends screen. Multiplayer puts two teammates at your side for ten waves. If a friend shows as In Game, Join drops you into their run.
Age rating
Pen Fire is rated 9+ for infrequent, mild cartoon violence. The enemies are stick figures, and the blood is red ink.