I am working on a good old fashioned robot shooting game for our 2016 Spring Lisp Game Jam: https://itch.io/jam/spring-2016-lisp-game-jam now available in playable alpha on Windows and Linux. (Mac version soon.)

The game is called INV8R: http://dto.itch.io/inv8r

The newest release (v0.4) includes level generation improvements, a new enemy that shoots bouncing blue lasers, and an Oxygen gauge that will kill you if you don't complete the level in time. This is accompanied by color coding and sound effects. Here is a video:

And another nice animated GIF:

I will be updating this Itch devlog with each new release, and would love to hear any feedback you might have. I have 7 days remaining in the game jam, and I'll be putting out 0.5, 0.6, 0.7 until finally 1.0 is submitted for the jam deadline. I'd like to continue developing the game after that time and expand it a bit further.

I'll be hacking some more today on the game and I'll post some other thoughts as well.

I hope you find the Gifs interesting and consider playing the game!

Watch this thread for updates.

---_David

Plans for next version 0.5:

• Limited visibility on darkness levels
• Find oxygen tanks sometimes
• More enemies
• Improve terrain and possibly allow larger levels

Just added version 0.5 with improved heads-up display, another new enemy, oxygen and other difficulty tweaks. You now have three lives with which to retry. Darkness is not yet implemented. Gonna keep working on it.

Just added v0.6 with changes to the difficulty curve, debugged mismunch enemy, and most importantly DARKNESS! After a certain point you will sometimes experience dark levels with limited visibility.

Updated to version 0.7 today with the following new changes:

• Find oxygen tanks to relieve time pressure
• Three kinds of powerups: Bouncy Bullets, Invincibility, and Rapid Fire.
• Improvements to difficulty curve and lighting
• Hit Control-P to pause/resume gameplay.

Updated to 0.8 with plenty of improvements:

• Improved terrain generation
• Award extra life at every 5 levels
• Changed player-bouncy-bullet color to avoid confusion with enemy bouncy bullets.
• Call garbage collector during each level transition
• Fix collision detection issue with player bullet in some cases with stationary enemies

Updated to 0.9 with several bug fixes. This is so much fun!

I'm also happy to announce that the game is now available on Mac OSX as well.

A nice new video of the new release:

I've released v1.0 with final boss, victory screen, more adjustments, and a new Drone enemy who chases you around.

Version 1.2 now has pseudo CRT shader fx!

a somewhat more janky shader

Version 1.4 is now up! I've improved the phosphor effect and spiffed up the website a bit.

So, what's next? Possible future developments:

• More levels and bosses
• Improve graphics
• Co-op and versus modes with my engine's network play

Version 1.7 is up on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

• Now includes ambient music (toggle with Control-M)
• Interpolate bullet positions to prevent missed collisions
• Final boss now fires robots! Which then fire lasers at you
• Tweak oxygen timer and other difficulty curves

Version 1.8 now adds Multiplayer! Local co-op and client/server network co-op are supported. The network features of my engine are still in beta, so network play might experience problems. Please let me know if you experience issues with the game and email me at dto@xelf.me or drop a note here.

Made a nice new trailer :)

Version 2.2 is up with additional graphics effects, a new enemy, and more.