How to Play
Collect 3 of the same the color power-ups to gain a powerful new weapon.
Shoot the UFO and collect the yellow power-ups to kick off fever mode!
Collect enough fever mode coins to enter a boss battle
This game is endless. Survive as long as you can while chasing a high score.
Controls
Left/Right move
Z shoots your gun (hold for auto-fire)
Updates
v1.7.2 - Fixed incorrect hitbox on UFO. Minor cleanup.
v1.7.1 - Fixed a crash bug in the background randomizer
v1.7 - Holidays are over...removed snow and Santa. Few minor fixes.
v1.6 - Holiday edition! Added shield powerup. Better manual fire. Boot up credits.
v1.5 - Bug fix for touchscreen added in 1.4
v1.4 - Touch controls for PocketCHIP. Touch sides of screen to move player.
v1.3 - Added auto/manual option for better PocketCHIP play. General cleanup.
v1.2 - Added boss battles between stages plus boss battle music.
About the game
Programmed by Brian Vaughn ( @morningtoast)
Music by Brian Follick (@gnarcade_vgm)
Backgrounds from the Pico-8 Community
This cart is less about the game and more about the people that contributed to it. It's tribute game in more ways than one.
First off, it's a tribute to Space Invaders Extreme that originally appeared on the Nintendo DS. It was Space Invaders kicked up a notch with a total sensory overload.
Second, it's a tribute and thank you to all the great little carts coming out of the Pico-8 forum. In particular, Invader Overload uses several of the carts from the TweetJam thread as manic backgrounds. Designs from zep, NuSan, kometbomb and others are included and create one hell of a show.
There were so many cool little demos coming out of the TweetJam thread that I just needed to find a way to use them. I consider Invader Overload a sort of TweetJam jukebox and hopefully we can all expand on it because you can totally add your own background! There's plenty of room left on the cart so give it a try.
This cart also features some great music from Brian Follick, aka, @gnarcade_vgm. He made a great music track specifically for this game along with a few sound effects, and without that collaboration, this game would have fallen completely flat.
I love This Its Amazing 1. Great Music 2. Great GamePlay 3. Just Amazing
I agree with all of the above, great stuff. Lot of fun to play.
Brilliant and very addictive!
I particularly like the simple "collect the colours" weapon upgrade system.
Well done! :D
Prety cool idea and awesome result. I didnt get the weapon system right away, but once I did it was great. I would love a boss that arrive sometimes.
Any reason you chose to make it collect three colours then reset? Rather than it simply being the most recent three you collected?
Your way I sometimes have to pick a colour as a throwaway to reset it after making a mistake. The other way I could just start collecting three of the colour I made a mistake with?
Woah! I just got a huge explosion - using red weapon and collecting yellow power.
maybe out of memory?
pico8 crashed hard and quit:
http://pastebin.com/raw/MimxF5vp
Thanks for all the feedback...happy everyone is enjoying it. It was a fun game to make since I was really just demaking another and having fun with it. Like I mentioned at the top, this game was made to really highlight the backgrounds and music...but glad the game itself turned out fun as well.
And...not sure how far anyone has gotten in the game yet but there are 8 different backgrounds to reach...have you seen them all?
@NuSan - A boss (or bosses) was in my original plan but just got cut because...because...lazy? The thought was to still have it be an endless game and bosses appear every 5 levels or something and then there be 2 or 3 boss variations to pull from. We'll see...might be something I go back to.
@matt - To be honest, the reason the color collecting works like it is, is because that's how it was in the Space Invaders Extreme game I was looking to remake. But I also don't mind the challenge of having to be mindful of the color you want to get and the challenge of getting it. I think the "dammit" reaction when you collect the wrong color is okay, especially since the power-ups are so plentiful it's easy to recover.
@morningtoast you're right, it's punishment for y collecting being sloppy
Really need to take a look a Space Invaders Extreme if it's like this.
This is awesome. I love SIE, now I need to go dig out my DS and play it again. Or actually, no I don't cause I can just play this version instead...
Completely brilliant use of the tweetjam stuff for the backgrounds. Psychedelic yo.
Now just need a version of Pacman anniversary and I'm set :)
Really good time. Super satisfying to get kills and new high-scores. Right now mine is 36,900
Awesome game.
play feel and sound and background.. all good!!
...I like laser :)
Thanks to the great response here and on Twitter, I'm going back and adding some boss battles. Gonna tweak some things while I'm in there including some new music. Nothing too fancy but enough to make things feel a little more complete. Hopefully will have an update this week.
Thanks again to everyone for all the feedback.
Fantastic job mate! Good feels, good music, good gameplay, good controls. Really solid!
Was happy to find out adding a second style of boss battle was within the code limits. Maybe room for a third if I squint.
Otherwise, some minor cleanup and some balancing (and maybe some more new music), and we'll all be able to rock out some new high scores.
Updated with v1.2 which includes new boss battle between stages as well as new music to go along with it. Cleaned up some bugs and tweaked some things.
Also available to play over on itch.io
https://morningtoast.itch.io/invader-overload
Please report any bugs or issues.
Enjoy. Thanks.
Updated to 1.3 which allows you to set auto-fire option, which makes this game play much better on the PocketCHIP.
If the PocketCHIP has taught me nothing after only a few days, it's that all shmups should offer an auto-fire option.
Updated to 1.4 with extended touchscreen support for PocketCHIP.
Set the auto-fire option then you can touch the sides of the screen to move left/right in game. Never touch the keyboard!
Whoa ! This game seriously rocks. You might add animation to the invaders (like the original has). Other than that, 2-thumbs up ! Solid shooter with lots of eye-candy effects and explosions !
I like the PocketCHIP controls!
I thought you might have added "mouse" controls for everything, but I can't get past the title screen on my iPhone. It would have been nice to try it on a mobile device.
Thanks for playing.
I think we're all hoping iPhone play is a possibility one day. Technically, it is mouse controls but using the web player on a phone is all janked...just don't work. I'm hoping they make a Pico-8 player for iOS with a virtual gamepad or something.
MorningToast, didn't someone make a plugin called PICOPAD ? Which allows you to use your cellphone's touch screen ability to navigate PICO ?
Did you think driving in snow was tough? Try shooting invaders!
Just a little update to help spread cheer, joy and frustration around the world.
But I did add a new power-up, shields! Collect 3 white bonus drops to activate and then blast away without fear.
There will be another release next year after the snow melts with more new features and hopefully a few new backgrounds.
Sorry, fixed a game over bug and then also added the ability to turn off the snow if you want to remove all the holiday cheer. Just hit UP on the title screen.
The holidays are over so just a quick update to remove the festive snow and Santa Claus that were added in 1.6 last month.
New minor feature is random backgrounds when you press Up on the title screen.
This will probably be the last update for a while. I'm happy with the game and with the response it's received - thanks to everyone that has played and continues to play Invader Overload.
I love this take on Space Invaders. It's like a new... old take :D New in that it's got that spammy bullet hell collectem up feel that seems to be popular now, but it's more pixelated than the original :D
My only critisism is the background is so darn busy I had trouble spotting bullets and powerups over it and I actually died a few times because of it. Couldn't darker colours be used for the background?
Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it! Hope you check out some of my others games :)
Yeah, the backgrounds are very busy but that's sort of the point and challenge. Sensory overload at its finest to keep you on your toes.
Found a few bugs after playing this one with my new Raspberry Pi console. Biggest fix was the hitbox on the UFO was incorrect following the Christmas update.
Anyway...enjoy and thanks for playing!
the boss battle background makes it very dificult to see the projectiles :/
otherwise, amazing game
Thanks for all the recent(ish) comments! I'm so happy this game can still entertain after all these years.
Please check out my other carts over on my Itch.io including Alien Harvest and BuzzKill - both PICO-8 originals. If you liked Invader Overload, you'll probably like those too. Thanks and game on!
@morningtoast Great to see you around again! This was one of the first games I booted up when I got pico-8 back in 2016, still one of my all time favourites too.
I'm just commenting to bring this to the top of the forum for a bit. Because it's worth it.
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