Decree

"As Archangel, chosen, crusade in Thy name! Go now, and descend the Cosmos to slay The Fallen, Morningstar!" - Decree of X

Controls

Gameplay

  • Collect Holy Water to fill your Flasks and Level Up! Each Level will grant a different powerful Blessing. Activating a Blessing will consume all flasks.



Collecting Holy Water after level 3 gives 1000 point score bonus!

Development

My first video game! Coded entirely on PICO-8 in May 2024, while restlessly tuning into the Lazy Devs Shmup PICO-8 Tutorial.

This was also my first PICO-8 project, and it won't be my last.

I originally envisioned Astro X to let you choose "Heaven" or "Hell" with each version giving the player a different experience - each version would deliver different enemies, wave layouts, Blessing abilities, and a different final boss. 

The pros? Two games in one! 

The cons? I have to make two games. 

Since this was my first project, I decided to simplify things and keep the code as close to the Lazy Devs tutorial as I could. My goal was to make a game, not design one.  Still, you will see that the Blessing system and much of the visual design survived the cut.

Credits

All coding, SFX, and graphics done by me, Billy Cross. 

Check it out on my PICO-8 page as well!

Special thanks to

Krystman and his Lazy Devs Academy for the tutorials and resources!

Robby Duguay  for the wonderfully composed Final Boss music, "Out of Control"

AchieGameDev for additional tutorials.

Nerdy Teachers for EVEN MORE resources and tutorials (and just a cute website)

And, of course, zep and his PICO-8 philosophy for making this entirely possible.

License

This game is released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Here's a link to a summary of the license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5, Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
Release date Jul 01, 2024
Rating
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
Authorohjiohji
GenreShooter
Made withPICO-8
TagsArcade, Bullet Hell, fantasy-console, PICO-8, Pixel Art, Retro, Sci-fi, Shoot 'Em Up, Space
Asset licenseCreative Commons Attribution_NonCommercial_ShareAlike v4.0 International
Average sessionA few minutes
InputsKeyboard, Gamepad (any)

Download

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

astrox_v3_linux.zip 754 kB
astrox_v3_osx.zip 7.3 MB
astrox_v3_raspi.zip 2.1 MB
astrox_v3_windows.zip 994 kB

Development log

Comments

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This is great. Nice changes from the LD tutorial and fine to stay close to the design. I like your idea on a hell and heaven mode .. one to put in the bag.

I didn't read the page first and was confused about lvl3 bomb thinking it was a flash kill/dmg everything on screen -- the shot is quite fast.

Very generous with the bombs/upgrades which I really liked .. just using them at 1 2 and 3  .. very cool.

Particle effects are really refined and I think your colours used are great.

Thanks! Appreciate the kind feedback. Good point about the LVL3 bullet. It seems easier to read in the windowed format, but fullscreen it's barely there. I think I've looked at it for so long I didn't even notice. 

Also, I saw your shmup in the showcase! Very fun splattering enemies :)

Excellent. Very Fluid. Congratulations !

Thank you!