An arcade style psudo-3D space sim shooter.
Explore space, protect the galaxy, and take down cosmic terrorists in this thrilling sci-fi adventure!
Updates:
Update 1.06
Game balancing
Update 1.05
Added ship to title screen
Update 1.04
Fixed bug allowing continue without save state, resulting in crash
Update 1.03
Minor UI updates
Update 1.02
Added Logo
Update 1.01
Minor UI formatting.
Really cool stuff!
I played through the first 3 missions. It's fun, the controls feel good and the pseudo-3d is convincing, reminds me of some games from my childhood. Also impressed with the amount of content in here (not sure how many missions there are in total).
I will say that the game feels very easy to me, at least so far -- I've only ever needed to use a repair kit once after getting hit by a bunch of asteroids, and I haven't really made much use of the stealth items.
The way the asteroids work seems a little confusing -- I keep trying to fly by them but they sort of just hover close to me. Maybe this is a limitation of the way you're doing the 3d though.
Anyway, it's a very cool game. Will play through the rest of it later.
Thanks for the feedback ericb! There are 7 missions total, and I tried to make the difficulty ramp up throughout the game while changing things up a bit in each level. If you play through it more, please let me know how the difficulty feels towards the end of the game, and I can see what needs to be done to balance it better. Thanks for your help!
This is tremendous. I don't know if you remember Solaris for the Atari 2600 (my favorite Atari game, BTW), but this reminds me a lot of the space combat sections of that game. Really well done, great feel, look, controls, sound, the whole package.
oh man this is fun! I have tried to make a game in 3D on pico-8 before and got a textured box rotating at like 5 fps! lol. It seems like rendering triangles pixel by pixel in pico-8 is expensive. I think pseudo 3D is probably a good way to go.
Awesome cart! I like graphics, gameplay dynamics and controls feeling (I play on my iPhone). I have one request: could we have an introduction screen in which we can see our ship shape and design? I would like to feel the pilot of a cool spaceship! Also I adore the cockpit design!!! Very great job!
That's a great idea! I've still got some unused sprite tiles, I could add it to the title screen
I like the yellow ship model in the title screen, but I would like to see the others. Maybe there is another cooler model… Please let me see them.
this is cool!
would you add an option for a control scheme where up is up?
I never got used to inverted plane controls
I'm a bit low on space to be adding more ship designs now, but if this turns out to be popular, then maybe I'll make a multicart sequel with all sorts of selectable ships for you :)
An inverted Y control option could be useful, I'm pretty tight on tokens, but I'll see if there's some way to implement it without going over. Until then, can you use the pico menu to temporarily remap the up and down controls? I know it'll be a pain to have to remap it back to play other games, but at least it's an option.
playing can be confusing if you play it first time (like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter pico-8)
it feels like search and destroy rather than dog fighting some reason, bullet is hard to dodge if you are close to enemy so recharge your shield if shield is break. game can be bit long there's many waves
Tufif thank you for your kind response. I was talking about this comments list: can you attach here the various ship sprites you have so we can chose (vote) the best one? I mean I like the one you put in the title screen, but I don’t like the grey engine nacelle, in fact in space there is no air to breath inside the turbine, like jet engines. So please put here in the forum the other sprites or edit those nacelles. Thank you!
Ahh, I see! Here are all of the ship sprites used in the game. Feel free to vote on your favorite!
Thank you! I love the triangle ones in position (1;4), (2;2) and (3;1). They are more aggressive and more futuristic…
This one is awesome. I think you nailed the controls and the feel of the game.
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This is really impressive and one of the most fun games on the PICO-8! Great job!
Ironicly the last mission was one of the easiest.
Also only 40 stars so far? Defenetly underrated
Awesome, but it definitely seems very forgiving. In my experience, the asteroids seem to be able to be avoided by just not looking at them, also possibly adding destroyable asteroids for power ups could be interesting. Loved it 10/10
Brand new to all of this is and this is wild, wild stuff. Extremely impressive!
Very fun and I think the difficulty is decent. Too much more and it would become frustrating and any less would make it boring. Very well done!
This was excellent! I wish it had an option to bump up the difficulty, as I was never forced to use missiles, stealth, or repairs. Still, great game, and I love the message.
Hey there! Great game! I just wanted to drop this here. I have a large focus on Pico-8 on my YouTube channel. I featured your game in one of my videos. https://youtu.be/-BQpgxWVg6M
I played a decent amount of this yesterday (about an 30 minutes or so, died in mission 4 as my first death) and one of the things I am...how do I say it...
IT's really difficult to describe the feeling I WANT to have this game versus the one I get with it and it is likely a me problem in that regard and I played a couple of games yesterday (I take breaks from Pico8 then sometimes come back and look through games that interest me from the last few months, this was one of them!) but they're fun and have a fun concept, but the difficulty ramp isn't quite MY level and such that...for me as an arcade junkie, fun for me is my first time playing, the rules and style of play are conveyed but it's rude and doesn't let me go through until a deep fundamental skill check is resolved and that's the first level. Then the remaining levels are twisting expectations of how that skills is used or simply ramping up the pressure to perform it in some way. But yours and several other games I really like don't feel this way and thus when I finally get a game over half way through the ENTIRE game on my FIRST play, I don't get a strong urge to come back. I can't explain it. It's like the game is fun enough in concept, but the first stages are, for lack of a better term, boring and should be cut as they currently are and then the ACTUAL game picks up at stage 3 and whatever you do for the last 2 stages, make them even harder.
So yeah, I really like the feel and vibe of this game, though there's some elements that are confusing, but I think they'll become more clear as I play, mostly as it comes to how the ship moves through space. That said, I didnt' read any instructions, and now I'm here, so I should probably do that. :P
So summary: Good game, early stages are too boringly easy FOR ME and thus lets the fun down a little. Some navigational aspects of the control can be confusing but overall, very addictive, especially reading the mission intros, then seeing how it translates into the actual mission and what ships and planets/etc. you might see and it's all very clearly presented. For a 'sim', when it ramps up the action, it's pretty arcadey.
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