Plot

Antsy Alien Attack Pico is a juicy retro-style vertically scrolling shoot 'em up. It is my love letter ๐Ÿ’Œ to the shmups I played in the arcades in the '80s and '90s ๐Ÿ•น๏ธ and my entry to Linux Game Jam 2023 ๐Ÿง

The year is 2139. Planet Earth is under attack by aliens, and they're (still) antsy!

Objective

rocket You're a mercenary with a state-of-the-art space fighter and a gun for hire
space_invader The United Federation of Planet Earth has hired you to dispatch the aliens and restore calm
moneybag Complete every mission to fulfil your contract and earn your pay

One ship. One life. One mission.

๐Ÿ’ฅ Destroy aliens by shooting or colliding with them
๐Ÿ›ธ๏ธ Avoid the aliens if you can't destroy them
๐Ÿ”‹ Collect power-ups to enhance your weapons and charge the ship dynamo
๐Ÿ›ก๏ธ A fully charged dynamo boosts ship health by 50%
๐Ÿ›‘ Weapons go offline when travelling at hyperspeed
๐ŸŒŒ When your health is depleted, you're lost to the vacuum of space

Controls joystick

Antsy Alien Attack Pico should work with most game controllers video_game The in-game visuals show the PICO-8 buttons, but the following shows the equivalent buttons for Xbox controllers.

ActionButton / Stick
Move D-padLeft Stick
Fire A
FireB

1-UP Keyboard one

ActionKey(s)
Left
Right
Up
Down
Fire NZC
FireMXV

2-UP Keyboard two

ActionKey(s)
Left S
Right F
Up E
Down D
Fire TabQ
FireShiftA

Game design triangular_ruler

Antsy Alien Attack Pico is a "sequel" to Antsy Alien Attack. Antsy Alien Attack Pico was developed during Linux Game Jam 2023 penguin using PICO-8. I've been looking for an excuse to learn PICO-8 and this is it!

Credits bow & Licenses man_judge

A big "Thank you!" to everyone below who contributed to making Antsy Alien Attack Pico during the game jam. Antsy Alien Attack Pico would have been boring shapes and silence had it not been for these fine people:

The game code is licensed under the MIT license, and all game assets are licensed using CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. As I'm using assets from other creators, and they use the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, the few SFX and sprites I created are also released under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 to keep things simple.

  • The player ship is from Krystian Majewski [CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0]
  • Most of the other sprites are created by Alice Masters [CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0]
  • All the music is from Gruber [CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0]
  • Most of the SFX are from Gruber [CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0]
StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux, HTML5
Release date Jun 05, 2023
Rating
Rated 4.0 out of 5 stars
(1 total ratings)
AuthorMartin Wimpress
GenreShooter, Action
Made withPICO-8
Tags2D, Arcade, linux-game-jam, PICO-8, Pixel Art, Retro, Shoot 'Em Up
Code licenseMIT License
Asset licenseCreative Commons Attribution_NonCommercial_ShareAlike v4.0 International
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard, Gamepad (any), Touchscreen, Smartphone
MultiplayerLocal multiplayer
Player count1 - 2

Download

Download
antsy-alien-attack-pico.p8.png 42 kB
Version 1.23.15723 Jun 06, 2023
Download
antsy-alien-attack-pico_1.23.15723.AppImage 953 kB
Version 1.23.15723 Jun 06, 2023
Download
antsy-alien-attack-pico_1.23.15723_amd64.deb 649 kB
Version 1.23.15723 Jun 06, 2023
Download
antsy-alien-attack-pico.dmg 3 MB
Version 1.23.15723 Jun 06, 2023
Download
antsy-alien-attack-pico-linux.zip 782 kB
Version 1.23.15723 Jun 06, 2023
Download
antsy-alien-attack-pico-linux_raspi.zip 2 MB
Version 1.23.15723 Jun 06, 2023
Download
antsy-alien-attack-pico-windows.zip 1 MB
Version 1.23.15723 Jun 06, 2023

Install instructions

Linux ๐Ÿง

Snap 

Available in the Snap Store and if you're running a Snap-compatible distribution, then you can open a terminal and run the following:

snap install antsy-alien-attack
snap connect antsy-alien-attack-pico:joystick

Debian/Ubuntu 

If you are running Debian or Ubuntu, you can download the .deb and install that using apt-get, so all the dependencies get installed.

apt-get install ./antsy-alien-attack-pico_VERSION_amd64.deb

AppImage

Download the AppImage, open a terminal and make it executable

chmod +x antsy-alien-attack-pico*.AppImage

Then run it via the terminal or double-click on it in your file browser.

NixOS

A Flake is available in the project GitHub โ„๏ธ

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi owners should download the antsy-alien-attack-pico-linux_raspi.zip  file and extract it. You'll find executables inside suitable for 32-bit and 64-bit Raspberry Pi. 

64-bit Raspberry Pi

If you are using a Raspberry 3, Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Zero, Compute Module 3 or 4, then open a terminal and run: 

./antsy-alien-attack-pico_64

32-bit Raspberry Pi

If you are using a Raspberry 2, Raspberry Pi 1, Raspberry Pi Zero or Zero W, then open a terminal and run: 

./antsy-alien-attack-pico

Other Linux

๐Ÿšจ You will need to install the SDL2 package for your distribution. 

Download antsy-alien-attack-pico-linux_raspi.zip, extract it, open a terminal and then run:

./antsy-alien-attack-pico

PICO-8 ๐ŸŽฎ๏ธ

If you own PICO-8 you can download the .p8.png (or right-click and save the cart image in the screenshot sidebar) and then LOAD it. Or use Splore in PICO-8 and find [Antsy Alien Attack Pico in the Lexaloffle BBS](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=52988).

FAKE-08

If you have a device, such as Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, Sony PS Vita, Nintendo Wii U or Miyoo that uses FAKE-8 to run PICO-8 games then you'll need to update to v0.0.2.20 or newer. Antsy Alien Attack Pico uses P8SCII text control codes that FAKE-8 added support for in v0.0.2.20.

macOS ๐Ÿ

macOS users should download the .dmg image and double-click it. 

Windows ๐ŸชŸ

Windows users should download the appropriate .zip file, extract and double-click the included .exe file.

Development log

View all posts

Comments

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how did you do that crt effect?

Using this project:

cool!

When I press "Play 1-Up | Continue" it reverts back the menu.

Ok I got it.  I need to press the other keys.