Solar Assaulted
The sun is under attack
and you're the last line of defense in this Galaga-style shoot-em-up. Fight your way through waves of enemies as you make your way from the edge of the solar system to our sun.
Controls
- Arrow Keys - Move
- (O)/Z - Shoot
- (X)/X - Toggle selection for Blast and other special moves
Once the X button has been hit an icon will flash next to the ship, indicating that a special move is ready to be selected. If unlocked tapping an arrow key will activate the corresponding special move
- Left/Right - Barrel Roll
- Up - Blast
If the special move is not available the icon will disappear and you can resume flying like normal
Upgrades
Enemies will drop items that increase your shield/health, charge your secondary weapon, or unlock upgrades for your ship. Collect these charge your upgrade meter. Once full the upgrade selection menu will automatically populate. Choose an upgrade to get back to flying.
Credits
This game was written and designed by Alex Hayden, who works in customer service. This is my very first game and honestly my first experience coding in any way. This game was put together while following the Lazy Devs Academy video channel tutorial.
Special thanks to Krystian Majewski for the extremely thorough and well-presented lessons. I've wanted to make a game for well over a decade and this tutorial series was exactly what I needed to get a completed game published.
Thank you to my play testers: Nick, Phillip, and Wesley. Your feedback was invaluable.
Thank you for playing!
Disclaimer
Feedback is definitely appreciated! I'd like to make more games and I'd like this game to be fun to play! That being said, I'm aware of a few issues with this game:
Occasional waves get skipped entirely- Fixed 1.9[nil] displays when you are out of upgrades- Fixed 1.8Boss/Midboss explodes indefinitely- Fixed 1.9- Player character occasionally shows incorrect sprite
I'd love to fix these, but I'm totally out of tokens. I'd be happy for any tips for guidance as well bugs you see that I don't have listed. Thanks for the help!
Updates
- Version 1.8
- Improved display at the top of the screen
- Slightly reduced enemy hp in early levels
- Reduced screen shake when shield is depleted
- Created warp-effect for stars when traveling between waves and planets
- Enemies no longer drop upgrade pickups when ship is fully upgraded
- Simplified shield system
- Increased starting shield when continuing after game over
- Version 1.9
- Revamped wave progression system to be more reliable
- Revamped enemy firing system to be more reliable
- Changed shield upgrade to a progression
- Created visual changes in explosions as shot damage is increased
- Created visual changes when all upgrades are acquired
- Improved "Win" Screen
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- 1.9 UpdateJan 20, 2023
Comments
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I have a few suggestion; one for balance and the others visual tweaks.
For balance, I think the player should be given full shields on continue. If a player struggled with 8 HP, having to try again with 2 ain't gonna help much.
As for visuals, could you get rid of the screen shaking when you're shields are gone? At best it's a distraction, and at worst it makes tracking enemies harder.
Lastly, I think the status bar could use a little tweaking. The way the meters are segmented appears as if your shields and blast max out at 6 units when they always increment/decrement by 2, meaning you actually have 3. And as for upgrades, you only need 2 capsules for one, so you hardly need a meter for it at all, probably an icon should've sufficed?
And for picking up the shield cap upgrade, it might be better to visualize this with a larger meter rather than an ×1/×2. If you move the blast meter and shorten the upgrade meter, (since it doesn't need to be as big as it is), you should have enough space to show it like this.
Note how 7 units are shown here, since the cap upgrade as it's currently displayed shows an empty meter with an ×2. With this layout, 5 units would be rendered as 5 blue squares, and we'd still have 8 hits total clearly visualized.
Already I've seen an exciting game with the progression through the solar system being reminiscent of Konami's Gyrus! And thanks for reading!
This is a poster child for constructive criticism!
Great thoughts and incredibly thorough explanation! Thanks for playing the game. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I will have to check out Gyrus. I've never played it.
Seriously thank you for the feedback. I personally liked the screen shake with low health, but I definitely see what you mean about making tracking more difficult, so I dialed it back quite a bit so it's hopefully not so distracting.
Also, I adopted (closely) your status bar recommendation and it actually opened up a lot of space to fix some things and add some features!
I hope you enjoy the changes. I also hope you don't mind my adding you to the credits under my list of play testers!
No problem! And I don't mind it at all! You even used the full-sized icons, that looks better than my mockup!
Seeing how the shield meter grows now has me wonder if it should be an incremental upgrade like firepower rather than instantly give you the largest shield. It would slightly increase difficulty sure, but since you've made enemies a bit easier in early stages now, I think this would fit along with the smoother difficulty scaling.
I've got an upcoming update that'll include that, along with quite a few additions and adjustments. Way more than I figured I'd have room for.
The biggest improvement I've got incoming is that the waves will consistently move from one to the next without skipping. Hoping to upload it tonight!