Even if it’s not easy, I’ve tried to use the compo theme as gameplay mechanic instead of a technical limitation only. My idea is that an “entire game on one screen” means a game with no scrolling. So the game is just that : you are a sprite inside a bitmap, and you are trying to prevent your enemies to scroll your single screen away.

It plays like a top-down arena shooter, except that the enemies stay at the border of the screen, and each enemies tend to scroll the screen towards itself. The more (or the bigger) the enemies, the faster the scrolling. When your background image unfortunately goes outside of the screen, the part that was scrolled away is lost forever, so be careful not to overshoot one side of the screen if you don’t want the background image to be scrolled away on the other side !

I’ve been toying with this idea and implementing a prototype during this whole day – no graphics for now, I’ve been solely focusing on gameplay.  Here is a functional prototype with several enemy types (some can even shot at you to freeze you). Tomorrow I’ll be working on GFX and SFX, and tweaking the game if needed. So the game is now looking for testers.

You can test the game here (Browser – Flash)

Do you find the game fun? And does the gameplay feels balanced?

Use the arrow keys to move, and click on the enemies to shoot them with your laser.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated