This is a bit late because I’ve been exhausted, but here is the finished game George and I wrote for the Ludum Dare 18 Jam.

It’s a bit like Asteroids, but with less asteroids and more Alien Chaos Spheres. You can’t destroy the Chaos Spheres directly, but you can use your laser cannon to push them around. Knock two or more Chaos Spheres together and they explode in a shower of sparks while you score some points.

It’s Flash based, so you can play it online. Click on the game to give it focus, then use the arrow keys and enter to navigate the menu. Use the left and right arrow keys to rotate your ship. Tap the up arrow for forward thrust, and tap the down arrow for reverse thrust. Press x to fire your laser cannon.

Score disproportionately more points for destroying Chaos Spheres soon after they spawn, for destroying Chaos Spheres that are moving fast, and for destroying many Chaos Spheres in quick succession.

We built this in 48 hours over the weekend, or 72 hours if you count some abandoned changes made on the last day. Bearing in mind the short amount of time in which it was built, I’m rather pleased with the way it turned out, although it is a bit rough round the edges. We plan to clean it up and introduce an improved version in a few weeks (or months).

If you score more than about 2 billion, the score counter overflows and you get a negative score. If you achieve that then... er... you win! (It is actually quite possible to do this, if you’re good).

We built the game in the very pleasant surroundings of the CB2 bistro in Cambridge, accompanied by indie game developers from Cambridge and across the UK. Thanks to those guys for helping make it such a fun weekend, and thanks also to the CB2 staff for tolerating us for 14 hours two days in a row! I am particularly indebted to Alan for patiently reminding me how vector math works, and without whom the game would be a shadow of its eventual self.

Foolishly, I didn’t take any photos of the event, but I’m sure Alistair won’t mind if I borrow his montage:

I’ve only just noticed that Dock was wearing a Rez t-shirt. Awesome!