Xenophobia
XENOPHOBIA
The Xeno Force has invaded! An alien race made of organic technology threatens all of humanity and you must defend the solar system against waves of onslaught. Blast and shoot through 3 levels of arcade action!
GAMEPLAY
Shoot enemies to score points and collect pickups while dodging their shots. Collect blue orbs to fill up your Charge Blast and fire off a powerful shot. Grab the pod ships to beef up your arsenal. Collecting points will award you with end-level bonuses. Red orbs refill your health bar. Watch out for the boss!!
CONTROLS
This game feels best when using a game pad.
Directional Keys - Move
X - Shoot
Z - Fire Charge Blast
UPDATES
v1.1
-Adjusted graphics for better readability
-Adjusted player controls slightly
Thanks for playing!! Click the cart image and download the cart to run load the game in your PICO-8 console!
Download
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Development log
- Xenophobia updateApr 14, 2020
Comments
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Made a video
Wow thanks for taking the time to play our game and make a video!!
Enemy readability was definitely a struggle. Trying to strike a balance between vibrant scenery and easily visible enemies is difficult with the limited color palette of the Pico-8. We will definitely address that in an update.
I included gameplay instructions on the itch.io page but I think I'll add some sort of key within the game as it's not entirely clear what eveything does unless you have read the instructions (ie. The blue bar being a power shot that's activated with the Z button).
I also noticed you weren't a fan of the controls. We tried to give weight to the players ship but sometimes it seems a bit sluggish.
We appreciate the feedback. Thanks again!
The enemies worked well throughout all of it, the last stage was just hard to tell where the enemies were due to the mass amount of them showing up.
Not using the power shot was way more our fault for not using the only other button and thinking the shooting was the only button and yeah didn't see the controls until after recording the video.
I believe the control of the ship was fine it seemed like an old arcade shoot em up so wasn't much trouble.
Not having any extra lives or continues was annoying because having to restart any game from the beginning is annoying but it was still a fun game and got the hang of it overtime so it was still a good game overall.
Hmm yeah, I think the game suffers incredibly from poor readability (it's hard to read what's going on on the screen) - enemy bullets are hard to tell apart from pickups, the debris and clouds in the levels add to that.
Plus, the boss behaviour includes no telegraphing of any kind, so they are pretty much unpredictable.
This all being said, it's really a fun game and very entertaining. If these weak spots were out of the place, it would be super awesome even!
Hope this feedback helps! :-)
Thanks for the feedback!! We will definitely take all that into consideration. :)
Pretty tough but I had fun!
Thanks!!! Do you think it's too tough? I prefer tough games but definitely don't want to alienate people.
I think it's short enough that being tough isn't too bad, maybe start the first level off a bit slower though. I found I had to die a couple of times just getting a hang of the controls, maybe have the first couple waves not fire back and move slowly so people have time to get a hang of things. (also it's not clear that the debris is not harmful, so I spent a while trying to dodge it xD)
Alrighty, thanks for the input!!