Time Crystal

SUMMARY / dl;tr

Fly around in space and shoot the aliens! Collect the Time Crystals™ in later waves to stop time.  Try to make it past wave 12!

• To TURN, use the [ Left ] and [ Right ] arrows, or [ A ] and [ D ]
• To accelerate FORWARD, use the [ Up ] arrow, or [ W ] 
• To SHOOT, press either [ Z ] , [ X ], [ / ], or [ Space ]
• Click Start with your mouse to begin the game

Use headphones for the best audio experience and original spacey music!

DETAILS

One enemy in each wave (after wave 2) will release a diamond-shaped TIME CRYSTAL.  There's just one per level.  Use it or lose it!

Protip: Alternate pressing [ Z ] and [ X ] to shoot really fast!

You can fly around and shoot on the home screen to practice the controls.

You start with 4 lives (shown on the top left corner).

If you touch a dangerous plasma ball from one of the aliens, you will lose a life.

Collecting a TIME CRYSTAL will temporarily stop all the aliens and their plasma balls (but they will still harm you).

Destroy all the aliens to advance to the next wave!  

SCORING

What wave did you get to?

Wave 5-9: Pretty good!

Wave 10-15: Respect!

Wave 16-18:  Seriously, woah.

Wave 19+: You must have invented the game.  No mere mortal has made it this far.

Wave 25: I think you broke the game.

ABOUT

This game was created in exactly three hours by our three person team (12-year-old twins and their dad)!  It was submitted for TriJam #121.

For this, our third TriJam entry, we strove to be more rigorous about the time limit, and we emphasized playability.  We simplified the game design to leave time for play testing and making it fun.  

The theme for the TriJam is "Exploring Spacetime,"  We started with the timeless Astroids control scheme, which we have prior experience coding.  Everyone loves bouncing off the walls in space, so we added that.  (Wall bouncing was inspired by an old game for the Commodore VIC 20 called Omega Race.).   We needed a time mechanic and considered some way to go back in time.  But freezing time was easier!

CREDITS

All artwork is original and was drawn by K. Haine using Krita.

All programming was done by C. Haine in Scratch v3.

Original music was written by P. Haine using Garage Band.  Audio samples were edited using Audacity.

Sound sample credits:

• kenney.nl
• freesound.org