Scramble, Scramble!!

Scramble, Scramble!!

The Gear Empire has invaded your star system. Pilot the Blue Raptor to defeat 15 waves of enemies by shooting them down with bullets or by crushing them with your Iron Egg!

This game is a shoot-em-up with a breakout/"Arkanoid" twist!

Controls:

• Arrow Keys to move
• Press X to shoot bullets
• Release X to reload bullets
• Press Z to throw the Iron Egg

Tips:

• Shoot the Iron Egg with bullets to make the Egg bounce back up and destroy your enemies!
• The "Heart" shape in the center of the Iron Egg will tell you what diagonal direction the egg is moving
  
• This game is actually hard. Don't feel too bad for using continues!
  

Developer's Notes:

This is the first game I've ever developed. I don't have a programming background - all I've done previously is mess around with Unity. I started developing this project when I realized that Unity and its physics engine really spoiled me, and as a result, I approached every programming challenge in terms of Unity's physics engine... which is a very narrow and self-limiting way to program.

Therefore I started looking for game engines that were the opposite of Unity. Because of how powerful (I think?) and broad Unity's tools are, I realized that Unity lent itself well to very big (and unfortunately, bloated) projects. I wanted something very barebones and limiting, so I settled on Pico-8. The restrictions surrounding Pico-8 (limited token, character, and sprite count) appealed to me as I wanted to quickly assemble a small project I could be proud of.

I don't think I could have made a better decision in my journey to improve at game development and programming. Pico-8's restrictions made it necessary for me to teach myself things like object-oriented programming, writing clean code, and making arrays. I also appreciate that this project forced me to approach programming problems mathematically. Again, Unity and its physics engine really spoiled me.

All that aside, there are definitely things I feel I could have done better. I wish I had documented my game development process better, and I'm certain there's a lot of stuff I could have written more efficiently. A lot of game mechanics I wanted to put in (i.e. power-ups, more enemy types, more waves of enemies) were cut out as a result.

Overall this was a tremendously positive experience for me, and I hope you will have fun playing my game!

ALSO: big thanks to Gruber! All tracks in this game were taken from "Pico-8 Tunes Vol.2."

Additional Thanks To:

• Lazy Devs/Krystman for Pico-8 tutorials
  
• Yu-Gi-Oh! I'm awful at creature design, so I based the enemy designs off some of my favorite Monsters from my childhood. Comment if you can figure out which ones they are!
  
• My Mom. Thanks for being the best <3