Antsy Alien Attack Pico
Plot
Antsy Alien Attack Pico is a juicy retro-style vertically scrolling shoot 'em up. It is my love letter 💌 to the shmups I played in the arcades in the '80s and '90s 🕹️ and my entry to Linux Game Jam 2023 🐧
The year is 2139. Planet Earth is under attack by aliens, and they're (still) antsy!
You're a mercenary with a state-of-the-art space fighter and a gun for hire
The United Federation of Planet Earth has hired you to dispatch the aliens and restore calm
Complete every mission to fulfil your contract and earn your pay
One ship. One life. One mission.
💥 Destroy aliens by shooting or colliding with them
🛸️ Avoid the aliens if you can't destroy them
🔋 Collect power-ups to enhance your weapons and charge the ship dynamo
🛡️ A fully charged dynamo boosts ship health by 50%
🛑 Weapons go offline when travelling at hyperspeed
🌌 When your health is depleted, you're lost to the vacuum of space
Antsy Alien Attack Pico should work with most game controllers 
The in-game visuals show the PICO-8 buttons, but the following shows the equivalent buttons for Xbox controllers.
| Action | Button / Stick |
|---|---|
| Move |  
|
| Fire | 
|
| Fire | 
|
| Action | Key(s) |
|---|---|
| Left | 
|
| Right | 
|
| Up | 
|
| Down | 
|
| Fire |   
|
| Fire |   
|
| Action | Key(s) |
|---|---|
| Left | 
|
| Right | 
|
| Up | 
|
| Down | 
|
| Fire |  
|
| Fire |  
|
Game design 
Antsy Alien Attack Pico is a "sequel" to Antsy Alien Attack. Antsy Alien Attack Pico was developed during Linux Game Jam 2023 
using PICO-8. I've been looking for an excuse to learn PICO-8 and this is it!
Credits 
& Licenses 
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]
Download
Install instructions
Linux 🐧
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 ❄️
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
🚨 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 🎮️
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 🍏
macOS users should download the .dmg image and double-click it.
Windows 🪟
Windows users should download the appropriate .zip file, extract and double-click the included .exe file.
Development log
- Antsy Alien Attack Pico - PostmortemJun 13, 2023
- Dev Log Day 11Jun 07, 2023
- Dev Log Day 10Jun 07, 2023
- Dev Log Day 9Jun 07, 2023
- Dev Log Day 8Jun 07, 2023
- Dev Log Day 7Jun 07, 2023
- Dev Log Day 6Jun 07, 2023
- Dev Log Day 5Jun 07, 2023
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.