Static: Flowerhorn Attack

Welcome to "Static: Flowerhorn Attack":

  This is a vertically scrolling C64 shoot'em up that has you piloting a space ship and making your way through levels, dealing with guardians, and generally trying to stay alive!

  This game is still in development and currently contains only 2 levels (first is quite easy, the second is very hard) and no sound, however, it is completely playable and the plan is to add other levels as the project continues...

HOW TO PLAY:

  You have 4 lives, but there is no HUD and there's no score, so there's no display of lives, energy, score or anything like that.  The player's ship has an amount of energy that is decremented when hit but there's no indication as to how much energy you have left.  Your ship can take a bit of a beating, so ordinarily you won't die immediately.  Just try not to get hit - ha ha - good luck.

  When you die, you go into what I call "suspension" mode (which can also be used to pause the game), where you are invulnerable, the scroll stops and most enemies stop moving, however they don't stop shooting at you.  The first thing you do when you die is to take your finger off the fire button because in "suspension" mode, you can move anywhere on the screen and you press fire to start your next life from that position.  You will be prevented from starting your next life if you are colliding with an enemy or the scenery at that location which will cause the ship to flash purple.  If the ship flashes gold, then you can resume from that point by pressing fire.  This allows you to move away from whatever destroyed your ship and have a little leeway for the beginning of the next life.  There is no temporary invulnerability once you start the next life, so choose a good position.

  The ship can hit the scenery with no ill effect, however, the ship will flash purple and you will be prevented from firing until no scenery collision is occurring.  You can however be destroyed by being crushed by the scroll (caught under a bit of scenery that is getting pushed off screen when you are at the bottom of the screen), so be wary of that.  Scenery that is collidable will stop you and your bullets, so that can be a way to navigate if you are unsure about what you can run into.  You can pick up "pods" (a maximum of 2), however, there is no collision on them, that is, they don't cause any damage to enemies if they touch them or get destroyed by touching the scenery.  When you die, you lose a "pod" (if you have one that is), but no other loss of weaponry occurs.

  "Icons" give you weaponry and can be shot to change what they will give you.  Any enemy has the potential of giving you an "icon" when destroyed.  You can only pick up a certain amount of lives per level.  "Icons" are smart, that is, if multiple "icons" are on the screen and they are displaying the same weapon and you pick one up, the other "icons" displaying that weapon will automatically change to something else that is available.  Note that there is no shield type "icon" so don't bother looking for one.

Following are some notes on the weapons:

LASER - Must be activated at least once for "mega-laser" to be activated.  "Lasers" do not require at least one "pod" because the ship can fire a beam.

MEGA-LASER - You must have 2 "pods" for this to be activated and if you die while it is active, it will be deactivated because you will lose a "pod".  Upon activation, a "bar" sprite will appear that has a little "notch" on the side that indicates how many shots you have left (6 shots is the maximum).  You must hold the fire button down to fill the "bar" and then release the fire button when you wish to fire the "mega-laser".  If you pick up another "mega-laser" "icon" while "mega-laser" is still active, then the "notch" will be reset to the maximum.  Once "mega-laser" is depleted, you will revert to normal "lasers" or "bullet" mode (whichever you had active before "mega-laser").

SCATTER - Requires at least 1 "pod".  The firing rate will decrease to accommodate this weapon but once it's deactivated, the original firing rate will be restored.

INCREASE FIRE RATE - Will only be available until you reach the maximum firing rate.

FLASH BOMB - This doesn't necessarily destroy everything on-screen, that is, it decreases the energy of every enemy or enemy bullet on-screen by a fixed amount but if something has more energy than that, it will continue to exist.

  My tips for surviving include using the scenery as much as possible as a shield and to choose what to engage with especially if you don't have decent weaponry.  Try to get weapons like "laser" because you won't lose it when you die.

OTHER INFO:

 The game works on both PAL and NTSC, however, it was really designed for PAL and therefore, the player's bullets/lasers can disappear a bit toward the top of the screen on NTSC when a colour RAM scroll/screen swap occurs, however, it's just a visual glitch due to reduced raster timing.

  You don't have to repeatedly hit the fire button to fire, because auto-fire is always active.  Levels start in "suspension" mode, so you have to press fire to actually start the game even though the background moving may appear that the scrolling is occurring.

  Lastly, pressing fire on the other joystick (port 1) destructs the ship and returns you to the title screen, but pressing a direction on the joystick "warps" to either another or the same level which is always entered at the start.  Press up to "warp" to the next level (wraps around) and down to "warp" to the start of the current level which can be done at any time during a level.  Note that you will lose all your weapons when "warping"!

  Enjoy.