Untitled Game

It’s the PERFECT name for a game.

(Controls: WASD or arrow keys, Ctrl to fire)

“Untitled Game” is a shmup I started fiddling with about a year ago, then ignored until very recently. Its major inspiration, gameplay-wise, is DemonStar – a game I spent entirely too much time playing on school computers back in the day.

It’s built in Java using LibGDX and compiled to Javascript using the Google Web Toolkit (Making it a pure JS project as far as you’re concerned – don’t worry, I’m not putting up any Java applets or Flash widgets in 2018!) There’s only one level at the moment – “Level Select” does nothing.

Aesthetically, Untitled Game is my attempt at trying out a very retro graphics style – a 16-color palette selected from the 64 EGA colors, and a 320×240 resolution (But I can’t call it “EGA” since EGA is slightly different: its aspect ratio was lower, at 320×200 (among other modes), and its 320×200 mode only supported the 16 CGA colors).

The aspect ratio has been one of the main issues with this game’s design. DemonStar’s aspect ratio is taller than it is wide, which is useful for giving the player time to react to enemies once they’ve appeared on the screen. With a fatter aspect ratio, you need a complex balance of player speed, enemy speed, and level design to make sure encounters are interesting but not overwhelming.

I probably won’t do any posts about this project unless I do something technically interesting with it – I’ve been thinking of possibly using a palette-swap technique, so effects can brighten or darken areas of the screen under them, which would be useful for fadeouts, hit flashing, and various effects. But we’ll see where it goes.

[UPDATE]: Audio works now. I’m an idiot and had a capitalization mismatch when loading the files. Also, the thing where the game loses focus and won’t capture keypresses if you clicked outside the canvas element is “fixed”.