Cosmic Alien Invasion | AthevonCZJ-GameDev

Cosmic Alien Invasion is a classic 2D Shoot em up game.

A fast paced arcade style SHMUP classic made using Stencyl.
The player will be playing as a fighter jet, cruising around earth and defend their home from waves of enemy aliens that try to take over the planet.

This game was made as a school assignment project.

Game Engine: Stencyl

Project duration: 3 - 4 weeks

Solo project

Play The Game Here

Or play it on itch.io

Design Process

This project is the 2nd assignment given to me for my 1st semester of game development degree from a module called Fundamentals of Game Tech.

We were given the task to create a classic 2D action arcade game, a shoot em up (SHMUP). Unlike the first assignment game Pingu Pongo, this time no skeleton project was given and I was challenged to create the game from scratch.

Concepting

As this was my first time making a proper classic shoot em up game, I decided that I would put more focus on the technical aspect of it rather than the art aspect.

Which is why for the theme of the game I went with something a lot more simple and typical, an alien invasion where the player has to fend them off and defend earth.

Having a simple and typical theme allows me to easily find quality assets online, such as 2D spaceship from established platforms like itch.io.

Example of an asset in my game found from itch.io
Link itch.io page here

Pre-production

As part of the requirements in the assignment, I have to come up with at least 2 types of power ups that would appear in gameplay. The first power up I chose is a straight forward damage increase that activates upon collection. For the second power up, it will be a health recover so that the player can have a way to sustain in the game.

In order to balance the game, I made the damage increase power up to last only 10 seconds and it is rare to drop from enemies. Meanwhile on the other hand I made the drop chance of the health recover power up to be slightly frequent as I did not want the player to feel the game being too punishing.

Sprite sheet of the power ups

Production

This stage marks the time where I implemented my game. The process was very straight forward and smooth since the lecturer had already covered the visual scripting techniques for a SHMUP during class.

My main task for this game was to just bring it life along with my ideas and unique twists.

Details on player & enemy mechanics, as well as game behaviors:

Player actions

Standard 8 way movement

WASD to move and SPACE BAR to shoot

Types of enemies: 2 types and 1 boss

enemies will have different health amounts and also attack patterns

Power up list

Power up:

Only enemy 2 has the chance of dropping the Power Up upgrade, it is set with the probability of 1/3
Collecting will give the player temporary damage increase for 10 seconds; the damage increase will set the player’s damage to 2 per bullet instead of 1.
If the upgrade is spawned but the player does not collect it, it will disappear after 10 seconds.

Health recover:

Both Enemies have their own set chances of dropping the Health Recovery upgrade, it is set at the probability of 1/6 for enemy 1 and 1/5 for enemy 2.
anything., collecting it will not change Collecting it will restore the player’s current health by 1; if the player’s health is already at maximum
If the upgrade is spawned, but the player does not collect it, it will disappear after 10 seconds.

Player character

Nautolan Ship - Battlecruiser - Base.png

Enemy 1

Enemy 2

Enemy Boss

Art Assets, Music & SFX:

All the art assets, music and sound effects are mainly found from the internet and established game platforms such as itch.io.

Link to all assets used here:
Music and sound tracks:

Assets from itch.io:

Gameplay Visuals