Vanity

A PICO-8 game in about 530 characters or something like that.

PLOT: There are enemies attacking you but there is nothing you can do, even your weapon is useless. It is a metaphor for the vanity of life.

Controls: left/right arrows to move, X to shoot.

Features:  there is music! there are sound effects! your spaceship lights its thrusters! Honestly, at that point I thought actual gameplay was not strictly necessary.

Source code:

a=12931o=128k=1450p=poke4 p(a-65,k)p(a,12)p(a+68,1)p(a+137,2048.1)for x=21,3,-2 do p(a+x,(k-x)*2)p(a+68+x,18904+120%x)end sfx(3)b={}z=58w=0t={-1,1}for i=1,o do b[-i]=add(b,-1)end::_::flip()cls()w+=1q=w%o if(btnp(5))b[-q],b[q]=z,106sfx(2,1) d=flr(t[btn()%4%3])z=mid(0,z+2*d,112)sfx(d%2,2)b[w/k]=18+rnd(74)for x=1,o do m=w+w+x%3*w+k*sin(x/73)pset(x,m%o,x%3+5)b[x]-=4 ?" ●",b[-x],b[x],7 n=flr(b[x/k])if n>x%16*o then r=w-x q=n+24*sin(n/8+w/64) ?" 🐱",q,r%o,11 end end ?" ●\n◆◆",z,112,d%2*10 ?" ★\n웃웃",z,110,14 ?" ❎",z,113 goto _