X-Galactic
This is my second Pico-8 game. It is a demake of Galactix for MS-DOS.
Story:
The story is included into the game itself in the story option from the main menu, the story is from Galactix (all story credits go to the original authors of Galactix)
Main Menu
Gameplay:
X-Galactic takes place over 100 waves (full game mode) or 50 waves (half game mode), destroy all enemy ships in each wave to progress to the next wave, watch out though some waves take place in asteroid fields.
When destroyed, some ships release pickups, use the claw to collect them, at the end of each wave there will be a short delay of about 8 seconds to allow collection of pickups, if no pickups exist the delay will be about 4 seconds.
Every 5 waves, there will be a mini-boss when destroyed will release a weapon-upgrade power-up limited to 3, if you have max weapons they will release an energy pickup instead.
If you are destroyed, you can choose to end the game and get the bad ending or try again to retry the current wave (your score will be reset to 0)
Intermission:
At the halfway point of the game, an intermission will play with some story elements, your missiles and bombs will be counted and points awarded.
Pickups:
Missile, Cause massive dammage to the enemy it hits.
Bomb, Explodes across the field causing large amounts of damage.
Armor, Some extra protection against hits.
Energy, Instant health regeneration
Shot/Weapon Upgrade, Update to next weapon limited to 3
Controls:
Left and Right - Move left or right
Down + Left and Right - Fast move
X/x - Fire your weapon(s)
O/z - Launch Missile
Down + O/z - Launch Bomb
Up - Release claw
Development:
This was a fun project to do and I wanted to try my hand at a demake. I was a big fan of Galactix as a kid so thought it was a great candidate for demaking in Pico-8. The ship graphics are inspired from the 1.3a version of Galactix.
Changes from Galactix:
- The movement in Galactix is controlled by the mouse which moves a paddle below the ship which the ship follows, as I wanted X-Galactic to work with controllers and handhelds, the movement in X-Galactic is directly controlled by the left and right buttons, to allow for faster movement X-Galactic has fast movement by holding the down arrow with left or right.
- X-Galactic has a simple armor system with armor appearing as pickups, when hit half the damage comes from your armor, Galactix dosen't have this.
- X-Galactic provides a short-game mode option which is not available in Galactix.
- Only the high score for each game mode is stored in the highscores page.
- The HUD does not animate as it does in Galactix.
- The main shutter is a different color in X-Galactic.
- When hit by the enemy X-Galactic flashes the stars red, Galactix flashes the blackness of space red.
Version History:
Version 1.3
- Made the enemies slowly get tougher and shoot more frequently after the intermission
- Small balancing changes
Version 1.2
- Fixed wrap-around bug in scoring, made the points for everything less so the signed 32bit score won't overflow
- Fixed drawing issue in end screen
- Small balancing changes
Version 1.0
- initial Release
Credits:
Game Idea: Scott Host (Cygnus Software)
Story: Scott Host (Cygnus Software)
Programming: Brendos
Graphics: Brendos, (GFX inspired from Galactix v1.3a)
Sfx: Brendos
In-Menu Music: "Space" by Gruber.
In-Game Music: "Demented Mario" by Gruber.
Death Screen Music: "Dungeon" by Gruber.
I really like the concept, the art, the music. Well done! =)
It's a little too easy tho... Maybe trying a progressive difficult after the bosses could be a nice idea.
Never played Galactix, I think I could give it a try.
Hi guscosta, thanks for the feedback, im glad you liked it, yeah I wasn't sure about the difficulty, now that I have some feedback about that point I'll look into increasing it, the progressive difficulty idea sounds good, cheers
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