That’s right, I’m working on a space shooter for my first ever game jam, which is being hosted by Newgrounds. The theme is ‘touch’, meaning the game has to have touch-based controls, and it is a Construct 2 tournament meaning participants are encouraged to use Construct 2. Most of the prizes include Construct 2 licenses, so it allows winners using the free version of Construct to win a personal license, or in my case, be able to upgrade to a business license without forking out lots of cash. You can read more about the game jam here: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1335307.

Currently my game does not have a name yet, although I intend to have one by the April 30 submission deadline. It is a space shooter that is best described as a combination of Asteroids and Space Invaders. My inspiration to create this game comes from a space shooter I played back in 2000 on Windows XP. It was a single-player game I got from an arcade multipack that featured asteroid fields, power-ups, and ship shields that could absorb any damage or collision. As of now, I am proud to say that my game prototype has recreated much of the mechanics of that game, and in the near future I will be expanding the game further to make it more interesting since there is over a month before the game jam deadline.

Can I play it now?

Yes, you can. The latest build can be played here: https://www.zesix.com/html5/SpaceGameV2/. The current controls are on the keyboard, but I will be including touch controls as soon as the graphic artist prepares the UI elements for that.

The current iteration of the game makes it very hard for a player to get past wave 8. I will be adding game features between now and the game jam deadline to make this less of an impossibility. In addition, all graphics and sounds currently used are placeholders. I have gotten in touch with a hobbyist sound artist and graphic artist to replace the placeholder media in the game, so stay tuned for a more polished experience in the near future.

The Near Future

Despite the game being playable right now, there are a lot of things to change and features to add. My current to-do list is as follows, for anyone who is interested in what is coming up next:

  1. Have enemies spawn only on the left and right sides. This will prevent any issues where enemies spawn close to the player. I will include code to make sure that if the player is near the left or right edge, any enemies that spawn will be repositioned away from the player to prevent ‘spawn collisions’.
  2. Have asteroids spawn only on the top and bottom. This solves a similar issue as the enemies, and I will also include code to prevent the player from immediately colliding with a spawned asteroid.
  3. Remove momentum loss at the end of a level. Currently, whenever the player complete a level, all momentum will stop as the next level begins. I will be removing the momentum loss so that the transition is more smooth.
  4. Remove asteroid destruction at the end of a level. Right now, all asteroids from a wave are destroyed upon the completion of the wave. I intend to remove this so that debris from the previous level persists in the new level. I also will lower the amount of asteroids spawned per level to just one major asteroid per wave, this way things don’t get out of hand at an exponential scale.

Of course, once the sound artist and graphic artist finish some of their work, I will slowly integrate their media into the game to replace the current placeholder artwork.

I Found A Bug! Where Can I Report It?

If you’ve found a bug or glitch, please report it in the comments here. In order for me to fix anything, I have to be able to reproduce it so please describe the problem with as much detail as you can. Also include what browser you are using since some bugs don’t occur in all browsers.

That sums up things for now. For the next few weeks, I will be working on this to get it ready for the game jam submission. Stay tuned!