On this quiet and endless night, the TETRATON will unleash its potential and attempt to survive this technological challenge where it has to change its weapon module the biggest number of times while being attacked by enemy ships!! WILL THE TETRATON MAKE IT TO THE END?!?!
No it will not. The night is endless.
A shooter inspired from LUFTRAUSERS and Super Crate Box.
'z' and 'x' rotates the TETRATON.
Directional buttons shoot (and propel) in involved direction.
Get to crate ball to change weapon and get a point.
16 different weapons.
Double parallax.
Lots of bullets.
Quick deaths.
Quick retries.
Palette randomization.
Not very good soundtrack but hey I tried.
Post your scores and please do tell me what you think!
If you really like the game a lot, you can also support it on the Itch.io page!
I enjoy the idea of a flying Super Crate Box game, and your graphics and effects really are gorgeous. That said, although it's a great proof of concept this game still annoys me from a gameplay perspective. Aiming is difficult, but not impossible, but there are always enemies suddenly coming on-screen without giving me enough time to react. And even when I do react in time, the best you can do is to fire all 4 guns at once and hope you hit enemies but they always seem to slip through.
So what I'm getting to, is that the biggest problem with TETRATON right now is that the screen is too small to be able to see the enemies coming and aim your weird guns. Combine that with the fact that you're struggling to remember which way is forwards, and that some guns fire BACKWARDS, and you have a game that doesn't feel very fair.
tl;dr:
It's a very pretty arcade shooter with Super Crate Box style gameplay, but which is frustrating to play because the screen is tiny and the enemies are really fast.
@matt: Thank you very much for the kind words!
@Connorses: The fears I had, exactly. I very much agree that the screen feels too small and that the ships come generally very fast. The fact that some weapons propel backwards was also risky design I know. They actually fire in the right direction, it's just the propelling that changes. If other people complain about it, I'll change it and make it so that the weapons always propel in the right direction. I don't really know what I can do about the screen size though :/. Thank you very much for the feedback! :D
Great game, fun and hard. The default weapon is a bit too hard, and my best hope was always to find a new weapon fast. I think you could make a little mark on the screen's edge in the direction where an enemy is coming, so you would have time to prepare. Maybe you could swap the arrow button when you rotate, so they stay roughly align with the screen. Right now it's hard to use rotation I think. Keep up the good work !
@NuSan: Thanks! That enemy indicator sounds like a great idea actually, although it sounds like a pain to implement... But I'm starting to think I could try and make the camera a bit more clever so you could see the enemy earlier. About the rotation, I think swapping the buttons would be confusing. Maybe I can tweak the rotation to make it feel better though. Thank you for the clever remarks and ideas!
I found that holding down all four direction buttons at once and spinning makes for a great strategy. It's like that scene in The Last Starfighter!
The game feel in this is great. Excellent job, and exactly what I like to see out of Pico-8.
The problems mentioned above are still valid, though, but I can't think of any fixes.
TETRATON was updated!
The TETRATON now rotates faster, for better control (still messy I know but it should be a bit better).
The name of the weapon you just picked up is now displayed in the up-right corner of the screen.
The color of the text was changed cause I thought it was too dark.
The crate-ball indicator now appears above the bullets.
The crate-balls now flicker.
The title-screen now flickers.
Also, while doing this update I poked the instructions limit of Pico-8. So I decided this was the only and last update of the game! LET IT BE FLAWED, THE NEXT ONE WILL BE BETTER.
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