How to Play
Shmoopy is an arcade style shoot 'em up (shmup) inspired by 1981's arcade shooter Galaga. Take control of your blue spaceship and combat your way through waves of aliens to face the final challenge: Shmoopy.
Rules
In Shmoopy, enemies approach in waves, shooting at and trying to collide with the player. Your ship has lives, when you get hit by an enemy or an enemy bullet, you lose a life. Lose all your lives, and it's game over. When you lose, you can choose to continue at your current wave, but with the score reset. Or you can choose to go back to the start and try from the beginning.
Controls
- Press the arrow keys to move your ship
- Press Z or N or C to shoot
- Press X or M or V to use your bomb
Bomb
Your bomb clears all enemy bullets from the screen and deals a moderate amount of damage to all enemies. Use it to get out of a tight spot instantly. But beware: they come in limited supply.
Pickups
During the game, enemies will drop a pickup when you earn a certain number of points. This pickup will flash between a life pickup and a bomb pickup. Collect it at the right time to increase either your lives or bombs by one.
Scoring
Shoot enemies to increase your score. The score an enemy type gives depends on its difficulty. Enemies that are attacking (moving down toward the player) give double the points when shot down.
Credits
Shmoopy is based on the Making a Shmup tutorial series by @Krystman, which served as the starting point and foundation for Shmoopy's design.
It uses code from the Pico-8 Tunes Volume 1 cart, written by @krajzeg and made available under the Creative Commons License. This code is responsible for the tentacles of Shmoopy.
The game is also available on itch.
https://redchickendev.itch.io/shmoopy
Changelog
V1.1 (03/05/2025)
- Mine enemies no longer cause global screenshake when exploding. The shake effect is still in place but it no longer interferes with dodging bullets.
Feedback is welcome
Any feedback and/or suggestions are most welcome. Feel free to leave a comment!
Thank you very much for playing!



Awesome shooter! Really difficult especially the last wave :O The movement was great and also the bomb power felt awesome.



@Krystman Thank you for your comment and checking out the game! (and for the series!)
The code for the tentacles is actually made by @krajzeg in the follwing cart https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=29008. I saw this cart by chance and saw that you could remix it and thought a beholder boss would really fit the theme. The tentacles are made using quadstrips, although I do not know in detail how it works. It is currently a bit above my paygrade. I basically fiddled with the parameters for the tentacles to adjust the size, length, speed, etc. to match my needs. So all credit for the actual logic of the tentacles goes to @krajzeg.
I'm planning to make another shmup in the future and look forward to checking out your advanced shmup series. Thanks again and have a good one! Cheers!
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