LudumData

Invaders: Evolution by vilya

[raw]
made by vilya for LD24 (COMPO)
An exploration of the sociopolitics behind the infamous Space Invaders war. :-)

Use the arrow keys to move left or right & space to fire. Press 'p' to pause the game at any time, or 'Esc' to quit.

There are two possible endings...

Note: sometimes you may see letters instead of the alien spaceships. If this happens to you, clearing your browser cache and reloading may fix the problem for you.

Note 2: some players found a bug where the game would freeze on them during the first level with the green aliens; this should now be fixed, but let me know if you still get it.

Note 3: I've added a post-compo version with a fix for the alien spawning logic. I'll be adding a few more fixes over the next couple of days as well.

Web (HTML5) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25468009/Invaders/index.html
Post-compo version http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25468009/Invaders/postcompo.html
Source https://github.com/vilya/Invaders
Post-mortem http://codervil.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/invaders-evolution-post-mortem.html
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=10456

Ratings

Coolness 94% 2
Overall 2.90 417
Audio 1.12 615
Fun 3.04 239
Graphics 2.29 600
Humor 3.59 36
Innovation 2.28 603
Mood 2.77 296
Theme 1.88 672

Feedback

jtoper
27. Aug 2012 路 01:38 UTC
I like it! It's a really good challenge
wibblymat
27. Aug 2012 路 11:24 UTC
Ha, "Trade Envoy" my bum. Let the guy on the first level get to the bottom to see what happened and I lost anyway! :D
馃帳 vilya
27. Aug 2012 路 11:44 UTC
He was selling high powered radios which just happen to operate at a frequency that turns human brains to jelly - easy mistake to make when you don't know the biology of your customers. :-)
headchant
27. Aug 2012 路 12:38 UTC
Those damn aliens again :)
LuizHGMonclar
27. Aug 2012 路 22:20 UTC
Hahahha, I love these "alternative explanations" to why stuff we know happened, really loved the humor :) had fun! Great game :)
nseward
27. Aug 2012 路 22:34 UTC
I loved the back story.
dalbinblue
27. Aug 2012 路 22:36 UTC
Hehe, liked the humor.
panda
27. Aug 2012 路 22:36 UTC
It's weird, running it on IE10 I get letters instead of the invader graphics (?)
kevincorrigan
27. Aug 2012 路 22:41 UTC
I really like space invaders so this was awesome, unfortunately it completely froze up on me in the first round with the green aliens. Great Game non the less!:)
馃帳 vilya
27. Aug 2012 路 22:47 UTC
panda: Sorry about that, I tested in Chrome, Firefox and Safari but not IE. I was using a custom font, via the @font-face css attribute, to draw the invaders. I guess IE doesn't support it yet. I'll update the entry details to mention that.

kevincorrigan: sorry for the freeze, I'll try to figure out what happened and fix it. Thanks for letting me know!
CataclysmicKnight
27. Aug 2012 路 23:44 UTC
It was quite fun! I got the freeze during the green/friendly alien portion as well, both times that I played it actually... And I'll admit I let the first alien get all the way to the bottom to see what would happen too :)
馃帳 vilya
28. Aug 2012 路 13:03 UTC
I think I've fixed that freeze now. Thanks for letting me know about it!
Drabiter
28. Aug 2012 路 14:17 UTC
It is easy, until you told me to not shoot the green ones :D
panda
29. Aug 2012 路 03:16 UTC
Love the humor! The game is fun, and I really liked how on the first three levels there's something different every time! It didn't work on IE9, btw, I saw letters instead of the symbols.
schnerble
29. Aug 2012 路 12:56 UTC
Quite fun - and a nice different style for the story :) Generally it's not too hard because of the number of shots you can shoot at once (except that avoiding hitting things can be hard!) - but in a couple of cases the alien phalanx ended up so wide they just went straight down, and it was almost impossible :) Good fun though!
馃帳 vilya
29. Aug 2012 路 13:01 UTC
Schnerble: the spawning logic is really buggy. The aliens are supposed to turn up in nice regular rows like in the original, but I didn't manage to find the bug before the deadline. I guess it adds to the challenge though. :-)
josefnpat
29. Aug 2012 路 19:38 UTC
This was very funny!
I like how stuff keeps popping up :)
gnx
29. Aug 2012 路 21:09 UTC
Nice how you changed the basic game by putting some backstory and context in it. I actually found the familiar gameplay more engaging because of that.
YSelf Tool
30. Aug 2012 路 21:31 UTC
I've lost... as everybody should do in a good ldgame.
Great retro graphics, nice dialogues, hard to play, good controls (as known since many years), great game!
Some sounds/music would be nice, but is not really needed.
dredlockz
01. Sep 2012 路 19:02 UTC
haha, really funny story between levels.
Although its pretty much space invaders other than that, and not related to the theme :(
Beep2Bleep
01. Sep 2012 路 19:06 UTC
Fun good shooter, thanks for making this!
馃帳 vilya
01. Sep 2012 路 22:08 UTC
dredlockz: um... it's an evolution of the original game formula...maybe? :-)
lekochen
04. Sep 2012 路 04:02 UTC
I like the dialogues between levels, but it's too hard!
marudziik
04. Sep 2012 路 08:48 UTC
I think theme-wise it's a little stretch, but the game is pretty awesome. I love the humour and story. The game gets quite hard with the introduction of green aliens, so I didn't manage to beat it. Very good entry though!
mohammad
05. Sep 2012 路 02:52 UTC
I really liked how you gave the aliens a perspective instead of bashing their heads without reason!
Arc
05. Sep 2012 路 07:25 UTC
Invaders with politics! Cool. You also captured the essence of superior firepower verses daunting numbers. Gave my space bar a real work out...
Martin Vilcans
05. Sep 2012 路 11:22 UTC
That's a good story! (For being Space Invaders that is.) Every level is a bit different, so I didn't get bored. The green aliens were a good twist, though it had been easy up to that level, it suddenly got hard. I looked in the source to see how the game ends. :-) Nice idea.

The one thing that's missing is sound.

You may be interested in this comic: http://elcomics.tumblr.com/
馃帳 vilya
05. Sep 2012 路 14:18 UTC
That comic is awesome! Thanks for the link!

With the green aliens, it doesn't matter if you shoot some of them - so long as you don't shoot too many of them. You win when the ratio of green aliens to white aliens is high enough; and if it sinks too low, you go to the other ending...
harusame
05. Sep 2012 路 15:26 UTC
Gode challenge ! I win \o/

It's just a pittye there is no audio.

Fun game.
darkshadow
06. Sep 2012 路 19:14 UTC
Great idea to add a story to space invaders! I see that unlike the original the games speed wasn't limited by the processor speed (lucky or the aliens will reach the bottom in moments with modern computers!) Anyway the green aliens added a real challenge, and I felt bad if I hit them. Spawn is buggy, and I lost during a cut-scene where I couldn't shoot which felt a bit unfair :'(
Sgt Squirrelly
07. Sep 2012 路 05:46 UTC
Hahaha, love the story!
johnfn
10. Sep 2012 路 10:21 UTC
LOL at your response to wibblymat, excellent. This game too was pretty funny. I lost at the end, I guess because I didn't save enough green guys, but it wasn't very clear. The tie-in to the theme was a bit questionable, but oh well, the game was fun :)
hnjslater
17. Sep 2012 路 08:40 UTC
Good fun game but not really related to the theme and, well, to be very honest, an awful lot like a game from the seventies I've played once or twice before. Good effort though, shame about the spawning bug.
alwaysinbeta
17. Sep 2012 路 21:02 UTC
So that's why those aliens kept invading! Loved the back story and the friendly invaders. The gameplay itself felt a little sluggish.