2 replies to this topic

[krougeau]

My name's Ken Rougeau & I'm an indie artist & aspiring game developer from Portland, Oregon. For the past few weeks, I've been hard at work on one of my first game projects, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Yep, that's right... I'm trying to make a great game out of one of the "worst movies ever made"*



The Story So Far: Deep in outer space, an alien presence has been monitoring the progress of Earth's scientists. Fearing that mankind's advances in atomic energy could eventually lead them to the discovery of Solarbonite, a high-energy substance capable of exploding the particles that make up sunlight itself, the alien rulers dispatch a ship across the galaxy. You are the commander of that alien saucer. Your mission: to reach Earth and stop the humans from discovering Solarbonite at any cost. You have been given permission to carry out Plan 9, which involves resurrecting the recently dead by stimulating their pituitary and pineal glands. You will then use this undead army to battle against Earth's military forces as you reign destruction down upon their cities from the skies. To prevent the destruction of the galaxy itself, mankind must be stopped!

The Game So Far: In the Plan 9 game, you play the alien invaders as you rush towards Earth to stop the humans before they discover the destructive power of Solarbonite. Work on the preliminary game levels is well under way and a working demo is currently available (now with more shiny stuff and things that go boom!). The demo can be played online in your web browser, or it can be downloaded for stand-alone play (Windows & Mac only currently).

For full details, screenshots & links to the playable demo, please visit the Plan 9 From Outer Space info page at QuixoteSoft.com.

Please try out the game and let me know what you think! Things are still very early in development, and your feedback can help me to make the final game that much better. Thanks for your support!



* = personally, I think "Birdemic" is the worst movie ever made... and it's a fairly new flick. Yikes! I love the Rifftrax version though

[fireside]

There's a typo on the demo page. It says right click to go fullcreen.
The demo game is ok, but I think the asteroids should be coming from the forward direction, like the stars, rather than from the bottom of the screen, and it needs a little more strategy, like limited ammo, etc. Kind of a good idea and the spaceship looks cool.

[RizzoR]

I was quite impressed with the game. I was pleased you had enemies other than the meteors.

It was odd where some portions were boringly easy then the next planet would be diabolically tricky with meteors and spaceships everywhere! Exciting though, and that was on easy. But you should have the two ends of the spectrum a little closer.

The ship and other flying...debris looked great. Not sure what they did though - I initially thought they were bad but they actually helped you. You may need to explain what each one does. For the exploding one, you may just want to make it an exploding barrel or something like that, so that way you can infer what it does
Also the particle effect you had around the laser didn't 'fizzle out'. It created the steam then just disappeared.

I'd personally like more powerups, like increased laser power or something. The health, 1up and shield pickups were very useful and well placed/timed

You also may want different sound effects to distinguish you hitting a meteor with a laser and a meteor hitting your ship. The sound effects you have now are really good. Same goes for the music.

Nice job, and all the best!