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Cart #42220 | 2017-07-06 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
166

How to Play
Collect 3 of the same the color power-ups to gain a powerful new weapon.
Shoot the UFO and collect the yellow power-ups to kick off fever mode!
Collect enough fever mode coins to enter a boss battle

This game is endless. Survive as long as you can while chasing a high score.

Controls
Left/Right move
Z shoots your gun (hold for auto-fire)

Updates
v1.7.2 - Fixed incorrect hitbox on UFO. Minor cleanup.
v1.7.1 - Fixed a crash bug in the background randomizer
v1.7 - Holidays are over...removed snow and Santa. Few minor fixes.
v1.6 - Holiday edition! Added shield powerup. Better manual fire. Boot up credits.
v1.5 - Bug fix for touchscreen added in 1.4
v1.4 - Touch controls for PocketCHIP. Touch sides of screen to move player.
v1.3 - Added auto/manual option for better PocketCHIP play. General cleanup.
v1.2 - Added boss battles between stages plus boss battle music.

About the game

Programmed by Brian Vaughn ( @morningtoast)
Music by Brian Follick (@gnarcade_vgm)
Backgrounds from the Pico-8 Community

This cart is less about the game and more about the people that contributed to it. It's tribute game in more ways than one.

First off, it's a tribute to Space Invaders Extreme that originally appeared on the Nintendo DS. It was Space Invaders kicked up a notch with a total sensory overload.

Second, it's a tribute and thank you to all the great little carts coming out of the Pico-8 forum. In particular, Invader Overload uses several of the carts from the TweetJam thread as manic backgrounds. Designs from zep, NuSan, kometbomb and others are included and create one hell of a show.

There were so many cool little demos coming out of the TweetJam thread that I just needed to find a way to use them. I consider Invader Overload a sort of TweetJam jukebox and hopefully we can all expand on it because you can totally add your own background! There's plenty of room left on the cart so give it a try.

This cart also features some great music from Brian Follick, aka, @gnarcade_vgm. He made a great music track specifically for this game along with a few sound effects, and without that collaboration, this game would have fallen completely flat.

P#26421 2016-08-03 21:44 ( Edited 2017-07-06 03:22)

Simply.. Wow...

P#26424 2016-08-03 22:03 ( Edited 2016-08-04 02:03)

Fantastic Game! Awesome job, Brian!

P#26426 2016-08-03 22:22 ( Edited 2016-08-04 02:22)

I love This Its Amazing 1. Great Music 2. Great GamePlay 3. Just Amazing

P#26428 2016-08-03 22:47 ( Edited 2016-08-04 02:47)

I agree with all of the above, great stuff. Lot of fun to play.

P#26431 2016-08-04 00:14 ( Edited 2016-08-04 04:14)

<3

P#26434 2016-08-04 00:22 ( Edited 2016-08-04 04:22)

Brilliant and very addictive!
I particularly like the simple "collect the colours" weapon upgrade system.
Well done! :D

P#26435 2016-08-04 00:45 ( Edited 2016-08-04 04:46)

Prety cool idea and awesome result. I didnt get the weapon system right away, but once I did it was great. I would love a boss that arrive sometimes.

P#26449 2016-08-04 06:33 ( Edited 2016-08-04 10:33)

<3

P#26457 2016-08-04 09:17 ( Edited 2016-08-04 13:17)

Just brilliant.

P#26460 2016-08-04 09:24 ( Edited 2016-08-04 13:24)

The weapon system is stellar!

P#26462 2016-08-04 09:32 ( Edited 2016-08-04 13:32)

Any reason you chose to make it collect three colours then reset? Rather than it simply being the most recent three you collected?

Your way I sometimes have to pick a colour as a throwaway to reset it after making a mistake. The other way I could just start collecting three of the colour I made a mistake with?

P#26463 2016-08-04 09:35 ( Edited 2016-08-04 13:35)

Woah! I just got a huge explosion - using red weapon and collecting yellow power.

maybe out of memory?

pico8 crashed hard and quit:
http://pastebin.com/raw/MimxF5vp

P#26466 2016-08-04 10:00 ( Edited 2016-08-04 14:00)

Thanks for all the feedback...happy everyone is enjoying it. It was a fun game to make since I was really just demaking another and having fun with it. Like I mentioned at the top, this game was made to really highlight the backgrounds and music...but glad the game itself turned out fun as well.

And...not sure how far anyone has gotten in the game yet but there are 8 different backgrounds to reach...have you seen them all?

@NuSan - A boss (or bosses) was in my original plan but just got cut because...because...lazy? The thought was to still have it be an endless game and bosses appear every 5 levels or something and then there be 2 or 3 boss variations to pull from. We'll see...might be something I go back to.

@matt - To be honest, the reason the color collecting works like it is, is because that's how it was in the Space Invaders Extreme game I was looking to remake. But I also don't mind the challenge of having to be mindful of the color you want to get and the challenge of getting it. I think the "dammit" reaction when you collect the wrong color is okay, especially since the power-ups are so plentiful it's easy to recover.

P#26467 2016-08-04 10:02 ( Edited 2016-08-04 14:02)

@morningtoast you're right, it's punishment for y collecting being sloppy

Really need to take a look a Space Invaders Extreme if it's like this.

P#26469 2016-08-04 10:15 ( Edited 2016-08-04 14:15)

good job, really fun :)

P#26473 2016-08-04 13:02 ( Edited 2016-08-04 17:02)

This is awesome. I love SIE, now I need to go dig out my DS and play it again. Or actually, no I don't cause I can just play this version instead...

Completely brilliant use of the tweetjam stuff for the backgrounds. Psychedelic yo.

Now just need a version of Pacman anniversary and I'm set :)

P#26494 2016-08-04 20:06 ( Edited 2016-08-05 00:06)

Really good time. Super satisfying to get kills and new high-scores. Right now mine is 36,900

P#26586 2016-08-06 13:50 ( Edited 2016-08-06 17:50)

Awesome game.
play feel and sound and background.. all good!!
...I like laser :)

P#26618 2016-08-07 04:15 ( Edited 2016-08-07 08:15)

Thanks to the great response here and on Twitter, I'm going back and adding some boss battles. Gonna tweak some things while I'm in there including some new music. Nothing too fancy but enough to make things feel a little more complete. Hopefully will have an update this week.

Thanks again to everyone for all the feedback.

P#26648 2016-08-07 23:20 ( Edited 2016-08-08 03:20)

Fantastic job mate! Good feels, good music, good gameplay, good controls. Really solid!

P#26674 2016-08-08 17:33 ( Edited 2016-08-08 21:33)

Was happy to find out adding a second style of boss battle was within the code limits. Maybe room for a third if I squint.

Otherwise, some minor cleanup and some balancing (and maybe some more new music), and we'll all be able to rock out some new high scores.

P#26714 2016-08-09 23:35 ( Edited 2016-08-10 03:35)

Updated with v1.2 which includes new boss battle between stages as well as new music to go along with it. Cleaned up some bugs and tweaked some things.

Also available to play over on itch.io
https://morningtoast.itch.io/invader-overload

Please report any bugs or issues.

Enjoy. Thanks.

P#27064 2016-08-18 20:37 ( Edited 2016-08-19 00:42)

Updated to 1.3 which allows you to set auto-fire option, which makes this game play much better on the PocketCHIP.

If the PocketCHIP has taught me nothing after only a few days, it's that all shmups should offer an auto-fire option.

P#27226 2016-08-22 23:16 ( Edited 2016-08-23 03:16)

Updated to 1.4 with extended touchscreen support for PocketCHIP.

Set the auto-fire option then you can touch the sides of the screen to move left/right in game. Never touch the keyboard!

P#29220 2016-09-23 23:03 ( Edited 2016-09-24 03:03)

Whoa ! This game seriously rocks. You might add animation to the invaders (like the original has). Other than that, 2-thumbs up ! Solid shooter with lots of eye-candy effects and explosions !

P#29221 2016-09-23 23:09 ( Edited 2016-09-24 03:09)

Just awesome! Great work!

P#29330 2016-09-24 18:48 ( Edited 2016-09-24 22:48)

I like the PocketCHIP controls!

I thought you might have added "mouse" controls for everything, but I can't get past the title screen on my iPhone. It would have been nice to try it on a mobile device.

P#29390 2016-09-25 14:40 ( Edited 2016-09-25 18:41)

Thanks for playing.

I think we're all hoping iPhone play is a possibility one day. Technically, it is mouse controls but using the web player on a phone is all janked...just don't work. I'm hoping they make a Pico-8 player for iOS with a virtual gamepad or something.

P#29391 2016-09-25 14:54 ( Edited 2016-09-25 18:54)

MorningToast, didn't someone make a plugin called PICOPAD ? Which allows you to use your cellphone's touch screen ability to navigate PICO ?

P#29407 2016-09-25 22:09 ( Edited 2016-09-26 02:09)

Awesome! Love Space Invaders!

P#29498 2016-09-27 10:23 ( Edited 2016-09-27 14:23)

Still great!

P#29613 2016-09-28 16:17 ( Edited 2016-09-28 20:17)

So far one of my favorites! Super fun!

P#30107 2016-10-06 05:45 ( Edited 2016-10-06 09:45)

Did you think driving in snow was tough? Try shooting invaders!

Just a little update to help spread cheer, joy and frustration around the world.

But I did add a new power-up, shields! Collect 3 white bonus drops to activate and then blast away without fear.

There will be another release next year after the snow melts with more new features and hopefully a few new backgrounds.

P#33763 2016-12-20 10:03 ( Edited 2016-12-20 15:03)

Sorry, fixed a game over bug and then also added the ability to turn off the snow if you want to remove all the holiday cheer. Just hit UP on the title screen.

P#33853 2016-12-21 09:23 ( Edited 2016-12-21 14:23)

The holidays are over so just a quick update to remove the festive snow and Santa Claus that were added in 1.6 last month.

New minor feature is random backgrounds when you press Up on the title screen.

This will probably be the last update for a while. I'm happy with the game and with the response it's received - thanks to everyone that has played and continues to play Invader Overload.

P#35042 2017-01-05 21:14 ( Edited 2017-01-06 02:14)

I love this take on Space Invaders. It's like a new... old take :D New in that it's got that spammy bullet hell collectem up feel that seems to be popular now, but it's more pixelated than the original :D

My only critisism is the background is so darn busy I had trouble spotting bullets and powerups over it and I actually died a few times because of it. Couldn't darker colours be used for the background?

P#37845 2017-02-26 08:27 ( Edited 2017-02-26 13:27)

Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it! Hope you check out some of my others games :)

Yeah, the backgrounds are very busy but that's sort of the point and challenge. Sensory overload at its finest to keep you on your toes.

P#37907 2017-02-27 20:36 ( Edited 2017-02-28 01:37)

Found a few bugs after playing this one with my new Raspberry Pi console. Biggest fix was the hitbox on the UFO was incorrect following the Christmas update.

Anyway...enjoy and thanks for playing!

P#42221 2017-07-05 23:22 ( Edited 2017-07-06 03:22)

Great DS Remake!

P#61300 2019-01-28 14:06

still one of my faves! loved extreme, love overload!

P#63113 2019-03-30 01:39

Fantastic !!!

P#84043 2020-11-09 15:55

Awesome! How did you get the fancy backgrounds to work?

P#87013 2021-01-31 14:39

the boss battle background makes it very dificult to see the projectiles :/
otherwise, amazing game

P#97354 2021-09-15 19:58

love the art style, flying controls are good.

P#97542 2021-09-19 11:54
1

Thanks for all the recent(ish) comments! I'm so happy this game can still entertain after all these years.

Please check out my other carts over on my Itch.io including Alien Harvest and BuzzKill - both PICO-8 originals. If you liked Invader Overload, you'll probably like those too. Thanks and game on!

https://morningtoast.itch.io/

P#97547 2021-09-19 15:17

@morningtoast Great to see you around again! This was one of the first games I booted up when I got pico-8 back in 2016, still one of my all time favourites too.

P#97556 2021-09-19 18:34

I'm just commenting to bring this to the top of the forum for a bit. Because it's worth it.

P#127298 2023-03-18 19:13

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