The sun is under attack
and you're the last line of defense in this Galaga-style shoot-em-up. Fight your way through waves of enemies as you make your way from the edge of the solar system to our sun.
Controls
- Arrow Keys - Move
- (O)/Z - Shoot
- (X)/X - Toggle selection for Blast and other special moves
Once the X button has been hit an icon will flash next to the ship, indicating that a special move is ready to be selected. If unlocked tapping an arrow key will activate the corresponding special move
- Left/Right - Barrel Roll
- Up - Blast
If the special move is not available the icon will disappear and you can resume flying like normal
Upgrades
Enemies will drop items that increase your shield/health, charge your secondary weapon, or unlock upgrades for your ship. Collect these charge your upgrade meter. Once full the upgrade selection menu will automatically populate. Choose an upgrade to get back to flying.
Credits
This game was written and designed by Alex Hayden, who works in customer service. This is my very first game and honestly my first experience coding in any way. This game was put together while following the Lazy Devs Academy video channel tutorial.
Special thanks to Krystian Majewski for the extremely thorough and well-presented lessons. I've wanted to make a game for well over a decade and this tutorial series was exactly what I needed to get a completed game published.
Thank you to my play testers: Nick, Phillip, and Wesley. Your feedback was invaluable.
Thank you for playing!
Disclaimer
Feedback is definitely appreciated! I'd like to make more games and I'd like this game to be fun to play! That being said, I'm aware of a few issues with this game:
- Occasional waves get skipped entirely - Fixed 1.9
- [nil] displays when you are out of upgrades - Fixed 1.8
- Boss/Midboss explodes indefinitely - Fixed 1.9
- Player character occasionally shows incorrect sprite
I'd love to fix these, but I'm totally out of tokens. I'd be happy for any tips for guidance as well bugs you see that I don't have listed. Thanks for the help!
Updates
- Version 1.8
- Improved display at the top of the screen
- Slightly reduced enemy hp in early levels
- Reduced screen shake when shield is depleted
- Created warp-effect for stars when traveling between waves and planets
- Enemies no longer drop upgrade pickups when ship is fully upgraded
- Simplified shield system
- Increased starting shield when continuing after game over
- Version 1.9
- Revamped wave progression system to be more reliable
- Revamped enemy firing system to be more reliable
- Changed shield upgrade to a progression
- Created visual changes in explosions as shot damage is increased
- Created visual changes when all upgrades are acquired
- Improved "Win" Screen
That was a very nice game, and full of nice touches over the original tutorial. Thank you!
I found that the basic enemies were a bit beefy, and it seems that they get even more HP in later planets. But other than that I liked it a lot!
You've got some lovely touches in here. The upgrades are nice. The boss sprites (that I've seen are lovely). The idea of traveling through the solar system is cool.
Well done.
This was fun until about Jupiter. Then the regular waves started to feel repetitive and the bosses got annoying. You have a good game here, and I've given it a gold star, but I don't think you need 7 waves for each of 10 planets.
For the regular waves, things did get interesting when the green shield ships turned up.
I died several times to both mid bosses and final bosses, meaning I repeated some planets and got more upgrades. I filled up on upgrades while playing through Venus. Something odd happened with the damage scaling; the late game enemies seemed to take many hits to destroy. Then I took a late-game damage upgrade and they started exploding in 2 or 3 hits.
And it did keep me motivated to reach the ending.
Thanks @SquidLight and @Cowirrie for playing and for the feedback! And thanks so much for playing to the end! I love it and am very happy with it. Although I admit it feels a bit unpolished, unbalanced and somewhat grindy as the game progresses.
I think I'm going to leave this one as is. I'll take what I learned here into making a new one. I really appreciate that you played through the whole game!
Could you make a version of your game with fixed stars? I have motion sickness and those of us who suffer from this get very dizzy with certain movements and it even gives us vertigo.
I really like your game and I would like to play it but for now I can't because it makes me dizzy, Thanks.
Nice, this feels pretty solid. I love the effects, and as some said before me, it's really cool that you're actually traveling through the Solar system. The jumps look awesome too!
I'm not familiar with the Lazy Devs tutorials so I don't have a lot of context here, but I'm definitely interested in playing this through.
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