How to play

Rules

In Shmoopy, enemies approach in waves, shooting at and trying to collide with the player. Your ship has lives —when you get hit by an enemy or an enemy bullet, you lose a life. Lose all your lives, and it's game over. When you lose, you can choose to continue at your current wave, but with the score reset. Or you can choose to go back to the start and try from the beginning.

Controls

Press the arrow keys to move your ship

    Press Z or N or C to shoot

   Press X or M or V to use your bomb

*Gamepads are supported

           

Bomb

Your bomb clears all enemy bullets from the screen and deals a moderate amount of damage to all enemies. Use it to get out of a tight spot instantly. But beware: they come in limited supply.

Pickups

During the game, enemies will drop a pickup when you earn a certain number of points. This pickup will flash between a life  pickup and a bomb  pickup. Collect it at the right time to increase either your lives or bombs by one.

Scoring

Shoot enemies to increase your score. The score an enemy type gives depends on its difficulty. Enemies that are attacking (moving down toward the player) give double the points when shot down.

Credits

Shmoopy has been solo-developed by Red Chicken, including the design, programming, and creation of the sound effects and music. It was developed using the PICO-8 game engine.

It is based on the Making a Shmup tutorial series by Lazy Devs Academy, which served as the starting point and foundation for Shmoopy's design.

It uses code from the Pico-8 Tunes Volume 1 cart, written by @krajzeg and made available under the Creative Commons License. This code is responsible for the tentacles of Shmoopy.

Shmoopy is inspired by Galaga and ZeroRanger.

           

Feedback is welcome

Any feedback and/or suggestions are most welcome. Feel free to leave a comment!