itch.io

You’ll get a lot more players if you create a page for the game and upload the HTML export from Pico-8.

Very good! Great graphics, tight gameplay. I love the touch of running back to the bike after a crash.

I find it impossible to play on a Mac laptop. Could you add keyboard controls for attack and clean?

I’ve added a fourth level and a fifth bonus level. Plus more sfx and gfx.

I aim to add one more level after the bonus level, before the jam deadline. My goal was eight levels, but I doubt I’ll have the time. Five levels and bonus level will still be enough of a challenge.

Thanks.

The score multiplier is not meant to be secret. I’ve just not had time to document it yet.

Every time you destroy a robot, your score multiplier is increased by one. If you do not destroy another robot within one second, your multiplier is reset back to one. So, you have to destroy robots in quick succession to keep building your score multiplier.

If your score multiplier is greater than one, the HUD will show a blue indicator light (well, single pixel – the game has 64x64 resolution) in the top-left corner of the screen above your lives indicator.

The game notifies you by a message in particles and by sound effect when your multiplier reaches 10x, 25x and 100x.

Thank you.

Yes, it is difficult, but I hope that every time the ship gets cornered by the robots, the player can see what they could have done differently to get them first. Then when they see that pattern of robots appear on screen they’ll know the moves to make.

I’ve added a third level and tweaked the gameplay parameters and level design to make the difficulty ramp up a bit more gently. (Just a bit!)

The game is work in progress. I’m been writing it in my spare time, so I submitted it early to ensure I got it in before the deadline.

The game mechanics are all there. I am adding more levels over the remaining days.

I managed to score 500 and something points, but I have no idea why!

The best I can do is $99

My best score is $107

Fun! My best score is 118.

I maxed out the craft and reached 218.

This is a great game!

Great movement system and animation. Tough game! I’ve only managed a pathetic score.

I know it’s a cross between a snake and a hippo, but I think of it as a Chinese dragon swooping through the clouds.

This is wonderful. Tough-but-fair gameplay. Pixel particle effect explosions. Power ups. Scoring. Progressively more difficult opponents. Movement with momentum that takes some practice but is not too tricky. That classic ‘80s arcade game “just one more go” addictiveness. And in less than 1k. It’s amazing!

Beautiful, and claustrophobic. I’ve not managed to save my soul yet…

Very very good. Impressive gameplay for 1k of code.

I managed to score 125 points.

Such a fun game!

The outline drawing of Pico-8’s built-in glyphs is very effective.

Yes, I meant in the jam submission page. Thanks for the explanation.

Amazing how much gameplay you crammed into 1k.

How do I get the source code of the submission to lay out properly? I cannot get the markdown syntax for code blocks to work.

Thank you.

I couldn’t get the code to run correctly on Pico-8 0.2.6B.

Edit: Aha! I think it’s because the position of the player is stored in variables x and y and the position of each enemy is stored in variables X and Y (capitals), and the distinction gets lost when you copy and paste into Pico-8.

Tough game. Looks great. And plays well with touch controls on mobile (although it is much easier than using the touchpad on a laptop).

Just amazing!

<rereads description> Oh… passing houses and farms! I was trying to direct the river over them.

Very effective use of the built-in glyphs and colour.

Very good. I’ve not got beyond 19… yet.

I love the animation. So much character in such a small amount of code. It even has camera shake!

I realised that it was too easy to miss that you have completed a level and then die by catching a wrong prime.

While commenting the code I found an opportunity to save three more characters. I’ve used two of those to change the background colour whenever you complete a level, so that it is now obvious when you have a new objective.

Such beautiful presentation. The feeling of dread when the rock lifts up is real!

Thank you. It was very hard to implement both the logic required by the game and an attractive presentation. I found a balance eventually, but presentation had to take a back seat.

I managed to find space for another 4 characters! So I have been able to add back colour.

Tough game! I haven’t got past 6.

A good idea for a game, with very slick presentation for a TweetTweetJam.

I found space for another four (count them!) characters. Enough to add colour. New version coming up…

This game affected me emotionally more than any game I’ve played since Journey. What amazing achievement. Gameplay as art, and in under 1k of code.

That was an enjoyable metroidvania game even without the amazing achievement of squeezing it into 1K of code. Great work.

I completed the game with seven green squares and a time of 1010.8.

Phenomenal!

Thank you.

I have posted the annotated source code of the latest version that explains how the game works and tricks I used to squeeze it into 484 characters.

https://dredds.itch.io/billabong/devlog/729963/annotated-source-code-for-the-latest-version

I managed to squeeze a lot more space out of the code (about 40 characters!) and used it to improve the visuals and still reduce the overall character count to 484. The new version is available on the project page.

Thank you. I think it would work well on an iPad and even support more than two players. Something I’ll have to experiment with in the future.