Eightbitoids
Description
Eightbitoids is a classic 2D space shooter where you pilot a small ship against swarms of asteroids, satellites, and UFOs. Every time you clear the field a new set of asteroids appears. The enemy ships are mindless but surprisingly deadly!
Controls:
- Up arrow - thrust - move forward in the facing direction
- Left and Right arrows - rotate - change the facing direction of your ship
- Space - fire - fire bullets in the facing direction of your ship
- Down arrow - feature - when enabled use either Hyperspace to quickly relocate or Flip to rotate 180 degrees
- R - restart the current run
- Q - quit the current run
- M - menu (when on the Game Over screen)
- P - play (when on the Menu screen or Game Over screen)
The default options are basically what was present on the Atari 2600. You earn a new ship every 5000 points. Your ship feature is hyperspace - jumping you to anywhere else on the screen. The enemy speed is the slower of the two available speeds. Satellites and UFOs will both appear randomly. The maximum score is 99,999 (and rolls over) and you start with 4 ships. The maximum number of new large asteroids spawned when the field is clear is 8. Large and medium asteroids will split into 2 asteroids when shot.
If you want an increased challenge you can change the defaults. Extra ships can be earned at every 5k, 10k, 20k, or not at all. You can swap hyperspace for flip or no ship feature. The enemy speed can be increased. The maximum achievable score can be increase from 99,999 to 99,999,999. Your starting ship count can be set between 1 and 4. The maximum number of new large asteroids spawned when the field is cleared can be increased from 8 to 12 or 16. The maximum number of asteroids that large and medium asteroids split into when shot can be increased from 2 to 3 or 4. You can enable the display of your shot accuracy for the game.
I built this game in GameMaker Studio 2 as a birthday gift for my nephew who has an interest in retro gaming. I wanted to make something for him that I played as a kid in the 80s so Asteroids from the Atari 2600 was an easy choice. I've tried to be as true to the original as possible because I wanted it to feel like an old game. I hope you enjoy playing this as much as I have enjoyed building it!
If you'd like to download this game for macOS or Windows please visit my Itch.io page - https://srcleaves.itch.io/eightbitoids