Hi Lestavol, glad you enjoyed it. As for inspirations, I'd say Snake and Asteroids are the most prominent ones yeah. There's also some Space Invaders in there, one of my buddies even insisted I should name the game Snake Invaders. Also Gradius was a big influence for me personally, I played the hell out of the R-types. I could similarly list any number of Bullet Hells and Schmups emerging from that era. Pong or Pinball is present, I'd argue there's even a bit of Pac-Man here too, where you switch from Prey to Predator at the drop of a hat. I even prototyped a Pac-Man style power-up in this game that would make enemies flee from you, but ultimately scrapped it as it was buggy and shared too much ground with other power-ups.
But mostly that's just name-dropping. I was inspired by the vibe of that time, when you'd go into an Arcade with some quarters and randomly play something really weird but fun above all, maybe with an offbeat name, barebones graphics and no tutorial. Maybe it wasn't even in a language you could read. So many ideas were connecting and cross-pollinating during those early experiments, you might recognize some part of the gameplay but be surprised by other elements emerging. There would be only a couple of buttons to learn, and while some cabinets would capture interest for a few minutes/quarters, some players would become determined to get their initials on the Leaderboard. I thought I'd try to make a game that would've fit neatly into a corner of one of those arcades.