Ops

About this game

Created by real life VLA Operators*, Ops takes you inside the shadowy world of U.S. Special Operations and puts you at the controls of the world's largest energy weapon: the Karl Zjunior Very Lethal Array! Disguised as a giant radio telescope larger than New York City, this massive weapon was built for one purpose and one purpose only: to terminate hostile aliens with extreme prejudice! Lucky for you, the night sky above rural New Mexico is a target-rich environment...

Knowing cows to be more intelligent than humans, the aliens seek to abduct as many cows as possible. Due to the VLA's special relationship with the cattle rancher, allowing all of the rancher's cattle to be abducted would be disastrous for your employer, the National Radio Ablation Office (NRAO). Ablate the aliens before they can abduct all the cows! Also, look out -- the alien ships pack devastating laser cannons that can melt your antennas within a few seconds. Kill the attacking ship before your antenna melts, and your antenna will eventually cool back down.

As you get to higher levels, you may notice other threats, such as chupacabras. These foul creatures are particularly nasty! A chupa will happily eat an entire cow whole (although they usually like to carry the cow back to their lair before doing so). Once a chupa has sunk its sizeable fangs and talons into a cow, the cow is mortally wounded and cannot be saved.

We wanted to do a "Last Starfighter"-style contest whereby whoever earns the highest score automatically gets offered a job with NRAO, but sadly that idea was deemed to be "too rad" to actually implement (paraphrasing a little here)... We do, however, encourage everyone who crushes this game to apply for a job with NRAO. It's an amazing place to work, and this game is exactly the same as being a real life VLA Operator!**

*This game is not approved or endorsed by the National Science Foundation, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, or Associated Universities, Inc. Many movies, TV shows, and video games have been set at the VLA over its ~50-year history... We just happen to work there!

**The truth value of this claim has not been independently verified and is dubious at best.

Latest news

• Patch Notes·19 Jul 2026Official

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  Now introducing sound effects! That's the main improvement, but you may notice a few other subtle changes (e.g. chupas now fly at a slightly more aerodynamic angle of attack, which is more realistic given the evolutionary factors at play). If you hate the sound effects, feel free to press the 'S' key to toggle them off. We added a tiny easter egg too, but we're not gonna tell you what it is. ;-) As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated! Cheers, ~ Pete
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• Patch Notes·25 Aug 2024Official

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  Greetings, Special Operators! Good morning, and Happy Weekend. I have an incremental update for you here. I spent most of my free time over the last week working out pages upon pages of math to improve the autogunner. As you may have noticed, it sometimes had some difficulty targeting chupas... The fact that they fly erratically at 3x the speed of other enemies didn't help. Anyway, I eventually solved the system of equations and came up with a valid symbolic solution that worked pretty well in the majority of cases. However, I was dismayed to discover that this symbolic solution, despite being quite accurate when it works, sometimes blows up (as equations are known to do). I put my thinking cap back on and came up with a better solution involving iterative approximation. Pure mathematicians would surely defecate on me for this, but I'm not a mathematician -- I'm an engineer! (Uh, kinda...). Anyway, it works quite well. I also cleaned up some of the approximations that the autogunner was working from, such as assuming that the radio waves emanate from the antenna centroid (they don't -- they come out of the antenna apex), or that they impact the enemy centroid (they don't -- they actually impact the enemy's bounding circle). This proved to be a critical factor that affects time of flight significantly, and the autogunner is greatly improved now. (If you don't know what the autogunner is, that's fine -- just press 'A', and all will be revealed!) ;-) There are probably other small changes here and there. For example, I added my buddy, Dr. Michael Krzyzaniak, to the credits, because he contributed some excellent feedback. Also, I reduced the number of Lightning Saucers to 1 for Level 6, to fit with the theme of adding, at most, one new enemy per level, then gradually increasing the count as the player progresses. This had been intended from the start, but it was such a minor thing that I only now got around to fixing it. In other news, we got featured on Steam's homepag...
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• Patch Notes·6 Aug 2024Official

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  Dear Friends, This morning, I pushed Ops v29 to Steam. This should be the final build prior to pre-publication review by Valve. As you may know, the game is scheduled to launch on Thursday, August 15th. HUGE THANKS to everyone who provided insightful comments, bug reports, and suggestions for improvement! There may be additional builds prior to publication, so please do continue to send me your honest feedback. The biggest change in v29 is the introduction of the F-317: a highly classified stealth bomber aircraft that delivers airdrops of power-ups to the player. There is currently only one power-up available: an induced gamma emission (IGE) warhead, based around a hafnium nuclear isomer, that kills all visible enemies through a flash of gamma radiation. To signal the F317 to drop the bomb, it is necessary to hit it with a radio wave. Likewise, to trigger the warhead to detonate, it is necessary to shoot the package as it's falling. A challenge? Absolutely! But you can do it!! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45118152/48b5a81d8658478bd495a944b044bafc50031a66.jpg ALSO, development of Ops Mobile is officially underway, so watch out for that in the Google Play Store soon! We now have a working port of the game running in Android 14 on a Google Pixel 8 Pro. It still needs work, and we don't want to fork the project too soon, so the Steam version of the game will take priority for now. If interested in Ops Mobile, please do give us a shout! Will it release for iOS as well? Possibly... That depends on the level of interest. Stay tuned! Cheers, ~ Pete http://www.vlaops.com
  Read full article on Community Announcements (RabbiHirschfeld)