Why Star Jet Alpha?
In this post I’d like to talk about why Star Jet Alpha was chosen as the first “official” title for Valles Games. As mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been hooked on video games since I first played Asteroids in the local arcade. The “local arcade” was the student union center at the university in the town I went to high school in. There were a few machines to play, mostly pinball games (which I also love to this day). While other machines rotated in and out of the arcade, Asteroids was a staple.
Asteroids fascinated me for a few reasons -
It was very simple to play. Rotate the ship, move the ship, shoot at the asteroids.
It was very difficult to play. Each time you shoot an asteroid, it breaks into smaller ones. If you didn’t completely take out an entire asteroid group, the screen quickly filled up which limited your room to move on the screen.
Just when you thought you had the patterns figured out, a UFO showed up to take pot shots at you. The bigger UFOs were easy to hit and aimed randomly. The smaller one was a real challenge. The small UFO had predictive aiming and was very hard to hit because it moved fast and was very small.
Asteroids had a few sequels, has been cloned many, many times over the years and has been made available on practically every platform. The popularity of the game is a testament to the game design and the addictive nature of the gameplay.
My goal with Star Jet Alpha is to create a similar gameplay experience - simple, progressively difficult (but with a difficulty setting), and addictive. Inspired by the classics, you have 2 controls - rotate and shoot. There is even an options setting for Autofire in case you don’t want to wear out your keyboard spacebar or controller button. Your ship (or Star Jet) is always moving, so there is no need to speed up or slow down. Your Star Jet stays fixed in the center of the screen allowing for large maps. You progress through each stage (level/map) by destroying the enemy space stations. Each space station has 6 cannons that track you and fire at you when you get close enough. Space stations also occasionally (more frequently at higher stages) fire missiles at you. Some of the missiles home in on you while others travel extremely quickly in a straight line. Some only launch from the space station’s core. Just before a missile launches from the core, the launch doors open. You can destroy a space station by either destroying all 6 of the cannons or by timing a shot that hits the core while the launch door is open. Destroy all of the space stations and you progress to the next stage.
Points are collected for destroying pretty much anything - enemy missiles, space station cannons, space mines, asteroids (immovable obstacles - I resisted the urge to make my own Asteroids clone!) and, of course, the space stations themselves.
As stages are completed, you unlock upgrades for your Star Jet. Initially, your Star Jet has only a single forward-facing cannon. Over time, multiple cannons become active - including ones that fire backwards.
From a development point-of-view, I’m currently splitting my time between implementing features (such as the new enemy Scout Ship), resolving bugs that are discovered in testing, and working on a teaser trailer.
If you or someone you know is interested in helping with testing, please let me know. Email me at info@vallesgames.com or DM me on Twitter. For your help, you will get a free copy of the game when it ships!
Feel free to comment below. Your support and engagement is very appreciated!