Welcome to Validius - a fun and furious shooter written for the Syntax Bomb "Reboot" competition.

I'm very proud that this game was the winner of that event.

There are three control modes for playing Validius: Gamepad is self-explanatory and offers the use of directional movement and firing with the two sticks on a PS4 or Xbox controller.

If you select Keyboard retro then you have normal 4 direction movement with the cursor keys or WASD. You can also use the diagonal movement keys of QEZC, as the game is tough to play with keys otherwise.

The third mode is Keyboard Drift, where you can set yourself moving in a direction and you will drift that way until you counter-thrust the opposite way as braking. Mostly it's the nearest to the control method of the original Asteroids.

I'd encourage you to use all three methods and choose what works best for you.

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Tips to help you play:

All the asteroids and bad guys have different damage levels. One shot just isn't going to cut it usually.

Autofire is the default because, hell, why would you keep tapping a fire button when you don't have to.

Bonus tokens in the game include: Smart bombs, Score boosters, Shields and Super strength shots. Also you have double and quad gun firing systems.

Extra life every 10,000 because those asteroids aren't going away.

The enemies mostly work on a distance focus which you should remember when shooting them down. Their ranges vary, depending on the ship type, and they're not very accurate. However get within range and they will turn to focus on you and start coming for you. The really dangerous one won't even stop until it bashes into you.

Bad guys can also shoot asteroids. Let them do some of the work if you get a rock between them. Good luck with getting any points for it, however.

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Game design & coding: Tony Brice

Technical assistance and function coding: Aaron Thorne

Additional Design suggestions: Triona Melhuish, Aaron Thorne and Nailesh Sheth.

Music and Sound credits as listed in the game.

Beta Testers: Triona Melhuish, Aaron Thorne, Alfie (AJGamer) Brice, and Nailesh Sheth.

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Special thanks to Qube for hosting the Syntax Bomb game coding competitions.

The music and graphics that I haven’t created are copyright their credited authors.

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