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Cart #grandmothership-4 | 2021-03-28 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
151

Shoot the Cores!

How fast can you destroy the Grandmothership and all of her cores?

  • Shoot by mashing or holding the 'x' button.
  • Aim your option buddy by holding the 'z' button (pauses the game as you're aiming).
  • Destroy the big 'eye' cores to earn power-ups and get a better fighting chance against evil.
  • Wreck havoc, destroy as much as possible for extra points!
  • Watch your shields (bottom of the game window), if they get depleted it's "game over, man!"

This game was heavily influenced by the third level of R-Type. I still remember how it blew my mind when I first played it as a kid in the 80's arcades. Please enjoy and feedback is always appreciated. Cheers!

Updates:

3/28/2021

  • HUGE art upgrade with help from none other than "Mathieu '@p01' Henri". He was kind enough to spend some time with the sprites in the game and I think it looks so much better now. Thanks a lot Mathieu!
  • Faded starfield when close to the upper and lower edges of the playfield, hopefully it helps with the boundary problems some people have experienced.
  • Other small bug fixes, polish and optimizations.

3/23/2021

  • Work on the background "starfield": added vertical parallax for depth and added a menuitem to tone-down the amount of distracting "stars"
  • Fixed issues with the upgrades menu: animates into the scene and it should be better about grabbing inputs at the right time
  • Fixed issue where if the player presses back during the initial part of the game they never reach the grandmothership
  • Initial wave of enemy ships now take one hit to kill
  • When the ship is close to zero health, it starts spewing out more smoke particles.
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1

fabulous game! i love scrolling shooters and i love levels where you maneuver around a giant mothership and it is very fun to fly around in your game and destroy everything in sight


Glad you enjoyed it, @Numzyx! I have an art update coming in very soon. Stay Tuned! :)


1

At first I thought the ship was severely under-powered, trying the below/above road, but once you start by the middle, and get a few powerups, you start to see what zones you can clear off without taking too much risks. In that sense, it has a real feel of exploration (R-typevania is a great way to put it).
Loved it, took about ~25 minutes to clear. It's really fantastic.

Background starfield was not an issue, except when there is hardly anything on screen: then, probably because of the concentration, I felt some motion sickness. If there are enough tokens, it could automatically reduce as you get further from the ship?

Small issue: the invisible walls can be disturbing, especially when enemies can fly way above the invisible limit. Maybe you could add some pixel dust to make it visible, or suggest that this is a wormhole boundary?

And a small bug report:
Runtime error line 1480 tab 0
Attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'sin' (a nil value)
(I got this while getting close to the upper invisible wall, otherwise I don't see anything to reproduce)


1

Amazing work. Gives me lots of ideas for a kosmoduck sequel.

I particularly love the ability to pause and aim, I wish more shooters had that.


@Woolion: Thanks for the detailed feedback and bug reports. I tried to handle those in my most recent update.

@Mikesta: Thanks, glad you enjoyed the game and inspired some ideas for your own game. Cheers!


Really enjoying this one. I'd like to see more "R-typevanias", as Woolion called it :)

I could see this as a candidate for a full (non-Pico) game, maybe with twin-stick controls for moving and aiming. Or aim with shoulder buttons, if you want to keep it a bit more challenging.


1

Good god this game slaps. This is EXACTLY the kind of fun assed game design I love the Pico-8 community for


I liked this! With the on-screen instructions alone it wasn't clear for me that the buddy could be moved around, I thought I could only aim left or right.


1

This feels like a bullet hell around the end there, super fun!


1

Such an addictive game. I have found myself humming the soundtrack during the day, and then coming back trying to beat the grandmothership.


1

This game is stellar. Feels like a good length, I love the level up options and the aiming reticle mechanic.


1

I've just discovered this game and I absolutely love it. Its beautifully presented, the game is challenging without being overwhelming and it has a good sense of progression.

Hopefully other people will follow and also make some "R-typevanias"


very cool


This is the most awesome game! one of the best on pico8
The gameplay feels super satisfying and the upgrade sistem with the eye cores is super fun. Short and well designed.

Awesome!


I cant for the life of me start this game on my Miyoo Mini Plus, It says to hit Z+X to start, i have hit every button combo i could cant get it to start ugh...


1

This is one of the first Pico8 games I played and I still love the concept and the atmosphere. The music is super-catchy too, it always gets stuck in my head after I play it.
I recently got a Powkiddy RGB30 and tried it for the first time on a handheld (vs. on a desktop setup with a keyboard) and it works great. The controls feel awesome with a joystick.



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