Aesthetics felt familiar to the old arcade ship games. Nice touch

Nice! My two high scores were 50 and 51. I spent quite a while at the beginning trying to figure out how to stab the ships with that orange sword I start with... Impressive amount of enemy variety and bullet patterns and such. Controls felt a little too floaty to me.

It really squeezes pico8 to the limit! congrats on the entry, I'm really bad at this types of games, but the first stages, though hard, are fun to play

Fun game! Runs kind of slow in my browser, I want to download it but the download link isn't working for some reason.

@bobotast that's really weird... did the itch not work? Could you try it again? I just checked and it worked for me..

Fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 45 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/-U44UyPCEiM

Wow, this is really well done. It looks extremely polished. It has an addictive game loop. Graphics and audio are as great as in any indie game, that had more than 48 hour. Good job. Really well done.

Great polished game, loved the aesthetics!

ok... really needs a 'hold down to keep shooting' which is fairly standard for shmup/bullet hell games. definitely has some enjoyable game loop... took a bit to start figuring out what worked/didn't work.

nice 8 bit sounds and graphics.

Love the graphics and overall vibe! So simple, but stylized!

Loved the style and sound effects. Not sure if I was missing the "start with nothing" aspect, but all in all it felt well polished. Nice job!

first pico 8 game this time .. this has a lot of style and a good amount of screenshake

Pretty neat game, though the visual feedback was a bit chaotic. A little too much going on at once, some color design to separate player/enemies/scenery could make the game more approachable.

I HATE THIS GAME

this is the first game tonight that made me rage quit. congrats!

[sarcasm] i just love that the power ups move at the same speed my ship does, so if they ever get below me I have 0% chance of catching up to them [/sarcasm]

overall, it is a very nice polished game. +1

things i hate about it:

(1) arrow keys only with no option for reconfiguration. come on, man, WASD!

(2) i would have much preferred WASD + space

(3) i wasnt really sure what all the power ups did

(4) the powerups often hid behind enemy fire, meaning collecting it was going to be useless

i have to give you props for

(5) mario-like health system where power ups give you extra life

(6) a red line indicating the current record. that was pretty cool!

(7) the music and the art style went along really well with the gameplay

(8) easy-access cheat menu. still didn't calm my rage tho

overall a great game but the controls and some mechanics made me rage quit

@shieldgenerator7 sorry for no wasd option, but that's how it goes, pico8 doesn't allow them... I liked playing with gamepad a lot, tho. That's for the feedback, and sorry for making you rage xD

Good job. The main character reminds me baseball player wit baseball bat and blue cap

Haha, @maliyshock that was supposed to be an astronaut xD

Nicely done. Great art. I died too many times within a few pixels from the power up I really needed. I'd probably like it to be a tiny bit easier. Great job using art to differentiate so many on-screen elements.

Cool little game that just needs a bit of balance. I felt like the game threw too much at me too soon, and should ramp up the action more gradually.

I enjoyed the game very much, a challenging bullet hell that was tough to get at first but once the powerups started falling I hit a good groove making it past my previous best.

this is nice! really good graphics and music, and gameplay is pretty fun. always a pleasure to see pico-8 ld games :)

this is very dynamic and smooth, those explosions feel great! Its perhaps a bit too hard for me at parts though

Great job! Loved the NES/Atari artstyle.

So tiny graphics :D Though I liked the background, it was very distracting and I couldn't focus - it's a hard game and I felt like not every time I see what I is really going on and thus not doing what I intended. But anyway, it's a really good game, very dynamic ;)

I love the game, but the first seconds can be needlessly frustrating if the RNG gods are not feeling generous. Once you get through that rough start it really starts to shine. Graphics and music are polished and catchy, and the shoot-em-up mechanics are well implemented with a nice nod to Mario's power ups.

Quite a solid entry, congrats!!

Quite pretty! Once I got the hang of the powerups it was very enjoyable.

I really liked the idea of using super mario power up symbols. Those symbols became like a gamer language that most people understand what they do without a second thought or explanation.

Cool idea, decent polish/'juice' wise too. Very difficult, but I'm improving over time (got a bit over 40 so far on my 12th try or so while I was only getting a few points at first).


I love those pico8 shmups ;)

It's *waaay* more polished than mine, and feels like a retail game from the 80's

nice entry egor! i have to say tho, the theme feels a little shoe-horned in: you can't really progress until you get the correct powerups, so starting with nothing and having them provided purely by rng just delays what feels like a "proper" starting state. it's nice and juicy once you get into it, and all the different retro ships look great, but would've liked to see a bit more creativity!

This was fun, loved the pixel art, and the epic sound/music. It's very tough ( even with the secret menu! )

Bonus points for a great UI and such a wealth of items / enemies. This is crazy insane detail for a compo! Mad props!


has that pico 8 juiciness and arcade adrenaline and feels like everything can explode at any moment