Star Beasts 1.3

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Star Beasts 1.3

by dredds

Cart #star_beasts-4 | 2021-12-22 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

26

Your ship has stopped in deep space to perform repairs. The crew are on a spacewalk when suddenly predators warp in from hyperspace. Save the crew!

Frantic shoot-em-up action inspired by 8-bit classics such as Uridium, Defender, Robotron, Asteroids and Thrust.

The controls are explained on the title screen.

You'll get a higher score the more risky your play:

• fly fast to get a score multiplier for each kill
• the bogies evolve to more dangerous forms that are worth more points
• you can earn big points by rescuing crew members far from the ship

There are four different ships. You'll encounter new challenges on later missions, and need to adapt your tactics.

You can also speedrun each level – your time is shown in the level complete screen.

The music is by @Gruber.

How high can you score?

Gameplay Tips

The bogies warp in near your ship in waves and follow fixed paths around the ship scouting for prey.

If you learn the patterns of waves and paths you can pick off the bogies with ease while they are scouting. It won't get you high scores, but you can speedrun the levels that way.

The faster you are travelling when you fire a shot, the more points you earn if the shot hits a bogey. But be careful. On higher levels, you can collide with the ship's superstructure. While your pod is pretty robust and bounces off at low speeds, at high speed collisions damage your pod.

Collisions with bogeys also damage your pod. You don't get any points for colliding with bogeys.

The "turret lock" lets you strafe the bogeys at high speed with less chance of collision.

If a bogey reaches the end of its path, it starts hunting the crew. It's body flashes between yellow and green, and it moves faster. You earn more points for taking out a bogey when it is hunting than when it is scouting.

When a bogey reaches the crew member it is hunting, it abducts the crew member. It then flies away from the player. It moves quite slowly when carrying an abducted crew member. Bogey's carrying an abducted crew member are highlighted as red blips on your pod's radar.

You can free the crew by shooting the bogey. Your shot propels the crew member in the same direction. Shoot from the right angle, and your shot will propel them back onto the deck of the ship.

If you shoot them in the wrong direction, they will float off into space to their doom.

Your only hope then is that another bogey will abduct them before they run out of air.

They can only land on the deck of the ship, not on the machinery and piping.

When a crew member lands on the deck, you get bonus points. The further they travel, the more points you get. One method to earn high scores is to let aliens carry your crew members far from the ship before freeing them. But leaving it too long is risky -- it's harder to direct the astronaut back to the ship, the alien might merge with the human before you shoot it and mutate into a more dangerous form, the freed crew member might run out of air before reaching the ship, or another alien might abduct the freed crew member again while they are floating in space. And in the meantime, other aliens are attacking the crew members still on the ship.

You've got to walk a tightrope between risk and reward to earn top scores without the whole situation collapsing into chaos.

Version History

1.0 - first public release
1.2 - Fixed colours of cart image in splore browser
1.3 - Improved appearance of ship in response to player feedback

Can you beat my hiscore?

Forgive the silly question, but how do I finish a level? When I played, the level just seemed to go on forever?

You have to kill all the bogeys.

They come in waves, and the next wave won’t start until you have killed enough of the preceding wave.

If a bogey snatches a crew member from the deck of the ship, they start flying away from you (but not v fast) so use your scanner to find and eliminate them.

nice work!

Thank you!

I've tested this game and it works with Pico-8 0.25

I played 3 games on this and I like what I've experienced save for some pacing issues and a mechanic...

1.) The stages are kinda big...looping them like defender would maybe feel more 'action heavy' as zooming too far from the base, there's no action there...there's nothing tying the player to the 'game' as it were other than slowly the aliens would take the astronauts.

2.) I noticed some familiar names for the bases, and thus I would assume that the '2 minute rule' would be enforced...i.e. your first game, no matter how good you are at games in general should only net you 2 minutes...at least arcade style games like this. My first game was pedestrian and I didn't feel the game cooks up to it's 'natural state' until nearly the end of level 2 and that's after about 10 minutes of 'oops, i can't steer for shit and the aliens aren't posing much of a threat either' for a long time.

3.) HOW DO YOU RESCUE ASTRONAUTS IN SPACE?!

Anyway, really cool game. If I can understand the code at all, I think for me, at least, level 2 should be level 1. It's super long, and gets going quickly enough to be a first stage. Stage one is like...tutorial level of unininteresting in terms of gameplay.

Super cool game. It's like a weird mix of defender, ripoff and sinistar.

Thanks for playing and your feedback.

The inspirations for this were Defender (protecting and saving crew members), Uridium (flying a small ship over big ships in space), and Asteroids (for the ship controls).

I've been meaning to revisit this ... I take your point about pacing. I'll see what I can change to address that in a future release. If you can stay on top of the alien waves, you can keep everything under control. But as more crew members are captured, it becomes increasingly difficult to protect the crew, save captured crew members and stop the aliens mutating. It becomes harder to keep things under control for long on higher levels.

Not sure about looping around the play area, because it would remove the game mechanic of preventing your crew floating to their deaths in space.

When you shoot a nasty that has captured a crew member, the crew member is ejected in the direction of your fire. So to save a kidnapped crew member, you have to manoeuvre around the nasty and shoot it so that the crew member is ejected towards the ship. When they drift back to the deck the ship, then will be saved, and go back to repairing the ship. But while drifting they can be captured again by another nasty. So if they are on course, you have to protect them. But that can be used as a tactic if they are going to miss the ship: you can wait for them to be recaptured, and then free them again to send them back on a better course.

When a crew member lands on the deck, you get bonus points. The further they travel, the more points you get. One method to earn high scores is to let aliens carry your crew members far from the ship before freeing them. But leaving it too long is risky -- it's harder to direct the astronaut back to the ship, the alien might merge with the human and mutate into a more dangerous form before you shoot it, the freed crew member might run out of air before reaching the ship, or another alien might abduct the freed crew member again while they are floating in space. And in the meantime, other aliens are attacking the crew members still on the ship. You've got to walk the tightrope between risk and reward to earn top scores without the whole situation collapsing into chaos.