Antsy Alien Attack Pico is a juicy retro-style vertically scrolling local 2-player shoot 'em up. It is my love letter 💌 to the shmups I played in the arcades in the '80s and '90s 🕹️ and my entry to Linux Game Jam 2023 🐧
This is the first time I've made anything with PICO-8, and I really enjoyed the experience. I'm looking forward to refining what I learned during the jam and working on some more PICO-8 projects in the future 🔮
> The year is 2139. Planet Earth is under attack by aliens, and they're (still) antsy!
🚀 You're a mercenary with a state-of-the-art space fighter and a gun for hire
👾 The United Federation of Planet Earth has hired you to dispatch the aliens and restore calm
💰️ Complete every mission to fulfil your contract and earn your pay
💥 Destroy aliens by shooting or colliding with them
🛸️ Avoid the aliens if you can't destroy them
🔋 Collect power-ups to enhance your weapons and charge the ship dynamo
🛡️ A fully charged dynamo boosts ship health by 50%
🛑 Weapons go offline when travelling at hyperspeed
🌌 When your ship health is depleted, you're lost to the vacuum of space
A big "Thank you!" to everyone below who contributed to the making of Antsy Alien Attack Pico during the game jam. Antsy Alien Attack Pico would have been boring shapes and silence had it not been for these fine people:
The game code is licensed under the MIT license, and all game assets are licensed using CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. As I'm using assets from other creators, and they use the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, the SFX and sprites I created are also released under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 to keep things simple.
You can find the source code, planning and "design" docs on GitHub:
The game is also published on Itch.io per the Linux Game Jam requirements.
I am still learning PICO-8, so feedback is always welcome. Enjoy the game.
Pew! Pew! 🚀