Did you include your Game Design Document in your downloadable files?
Yes

Tell us about your game!
Brain Bugz is a galaga-like game where you fight intrusive thoughts inside a brain/mind. The intrusive thoughts (brain bugs) fire projectiles that reduce the gameplay space.

Controls
Keyboard & Mouse
Arrow keys / WASD - Move
Left mouse click - Fire
Esc - Pause menu

Theme Interpretation (Overcome by pushing forward)
The metaphor behind the game is about intrusive thoughts filling up the mind and the player, you, trying to fight back while being, sometimes, overwhelmed.

The “It’s spreading” theme comes from the fact that when intrusive thoughts start taking over, it becomes easier to be overwhelmed, this puts oneself in a position of vulnerability, making it harder to juggle everything that is thrown at you.

Did you remember to include your Game Design Document?
YEs

Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes

Extra Notes
What’s next?
We are satisfied with the final product as we were a team of only 3 people with little experience in making games. We think that we nailed the retro-arcade feeling of the game, the sounds, gameplay and arts seems to all mesh together to form an oldschool “galaga-like” game with our own little spin on it by adding the rising level of brain goop.

We feel that the theme was nicely implemented in the game and explored in a singular way, the spreading of intrusive thoughts was for us an interesting way to approach questions about self-care and mental health and the game-over screen highlight the fact that it is okay to feel overwhelmed sometimes, the most important thing is to not give up!

Going forward we might try to port the game to a mobile support as this would be an interesting challenge and we feel that this is the kind of arcade experience that would lend itself well to a cell phone platform.