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[Baltirow]

Story
"""""
Your and your space-alien buddies are in deep trouble! You are out of fuel to return to your home! Luckily, scanners picked up a nearby planet that is loaded with Astrogen, the fuel of fuels! Surely you can find a source plentiful enough to return!


Gameplay
""""""""
Although you fly a state-of-the-galactical-art ship that is invulnerable to the pathetic earthlings' weapons, your fuel crisis leaves you somewhat powerless.

Only the ships grapplers are still operable and even they use up precious Astrogen! So use them grapplers to pick up female specimens to replenish your immediate reserves. Pick up several females in a row to get multipliers (reset to 1 when you pick up a guy or miss)!

Grapplers have (near) infinite range. If they collide with the ground, your ship gets a vertical boost. A smaller boost is given when you grappler objects.

If your ship hits the ground, your shields will attempt to prevent damage of the impact. If succesful, the ship will bounce slightly. Using shields gives a hefty penalty on the Astrogen reserves!

With increasing points you will have increasing resistance. Get through all waves and you finish the game. Finish the game to immortalise your score 

*** Warning: Earthlings are known to over-indulge in alcoholes. Stay clear of the drunk ones! ***


Controls
""""""""
Left mouse button   Use grapplers (Pick up objects, Bounce off ground).
Right mouse button   Drop all grapplers' contents


DOWNLOAD v101



For the OLDE version (and perhaps a bit more challenge):
|DOWNLOAD|

PS: Please post in this topic if any errors occur etc!

[Montoli]

Nice!  Is... is the cloud layer at the top of the screen how you go from "orbital" to "local?"


I really like the promise of the title screen...  giant hooks descending from the clouds, skill-crane style...



Also, your pixel art rules.

[Pip]

If this isn't in need of a bump, then call me Crystal.

[moi]

Nice, but.... these screenshots lack booty if you see what I mean.

[Baltirow]

Nice!  Is... is the cloud layer at the top of the screen how you go from "orbital" to "local?"

I really like the promise of the title screen...  giant hooks descending from the clouds, skill-crane style...

The cloud layer works as a kind of atmosphere: it gives friction when going up fast and the gravity is lower above the clouds.

When the ship or hooks/claws penetrate the cloud layer, a puff effect is created, so yeah, you basically can do what the title screen promises

Currently adding more content, like women in Cadillacs, ambulances etc.

[TooMuchSpareTime]

But watch out for those wily drag-queens!  :D

[Baltirow]

Actually, the setting is more in a 50's-ish mood:


don't grab da bumms or you will fly woozy

[Pip]

don't grab da bumms or you will fly woozy

The very words I live by.

[Derek]

Needs more "badonkadonk!"

But srsly, great work so far.  Love the graphics!

[sergiocornaga]

I love your slightly cubist title screen (?) pixel art.

[Baltirow]

Game is almost finished, just the teaser above to show it's still gut a pulse

Hope to finish it somewhere tomorrow!

[ProgZmax]

Excellent color and design choice with this.  Hopefully people will also have some fun with my commodore 64 style :D.

[Baltirow]

The game is finished! Download in first post, have fun 

[Ciardhubh]

Very stylish game with interesting controls. 

I'm not quite sure if I get the limitations of the grappling arms right. After some time they stop working (even though I still have Astrogen). They don't fully retract to the ship. The arms then sort of limp behind the ship just a bit. Once both are non-functional I crash.  Strangely enough the ship then sometimes slides off one direction and the camera goes the other way. Bug or "undocumented feature" ?

[Baltirow]

Very stylish game with interesting controls. 

Thanks, it was fun making it too

I'm not quite sure if I get the limitations of the grappling arms right. After some time they stop working (even though I still have Astrogen). They don't fully retract to the ship. The arms then sort of limp behind the ship just a bit. Once both are non-functional I crash.  Strangely enough the ship then sometimes slides off one direction and the camera goes the other way. Bug or "undocumented feature" ?

The first thing only happens at very high speeds. I actually kept it this way (although I did increase grappler retraction rate) on purpose. It kinda reflects that the grapplers were never designed to do this job
The latter is a bug that, but I liked how it made the ship look going all hay-wire, so I kept it the way it was  .

TIP: If you notice your grapplers are having difficult retracting, most of the time you are still carrying cargo. Consider dropping the cargo you have...

[Massena]

Overall I think this is a fun game, but it does have some problems:

• TIP: If you notice your grapplers are having difficult retracting, most of the time you are still carrying cargo. Consider dropping the cargo you have...
  

  Perhaps you should mention this in-game? Not many people read the read-me.
• Many times I ended up going way too fast in one direction, crashing. Maybe there should be some limit on horizontal speed.

• The latter is a bug that, but I liked how it made the ship look going all hay-wire, so I kept it the way it was  .
  

  It happened to me once, I don't think it should be a feature, as it looks pretty bug-ish, IMO.
• It's not very nice to restart the game every time the player looses, perhaps there should be some sort of restart screen or something.

I did like your game and enjoyed playing it but these are just my little pet peeves .

[seregrail7]

I just couldn't enjoy this, as I don't know what's going on far too often. I'm constantly moving across the screen horizontally at ridiculous speeds for no good reason. Sometimes I go off the edge of the screen and get dumped back to the main menu. I really like the concept, and the basic game mechanics but it definitely needs some polish.

[Baltirow]

I just couldn't enjoy this, as I don't know what's going on far too often. I'm constantly moving across the screen horizontally at ridiculous speeds for no good reason. Sometimes I go off the edge of the screen and get dumped back to the main menu. I really like the concept, and the basic game mechanics but it definitely needs some polish.

Sorry to here you had such a bad experience with the game. I admit the game has some playability issues.

Still, I think one of the fun parts of any arcade game is to find out what strategy gives the best results. A lot of the mechanisms I added to the game are based on a sort of 'common sense'. For example: it makes sense that grapplers will retract faster when you have no cargo attached (less inertia) and it makes sense that the angle at which your grappler hits the ground affects the direction in which you get a boost.

So, I hope you will give the game another try, but I do appreciate the feedback 

[seregrail7]

I did enjoy it, a bit. It's just that the horizontal speed was really fast, about 3 times the vertical speed is after a bounce.
When it was working, and I was bouncing off the ground and grabbing booty, it was great. I don't mind the slow retracting, I agree that it makes sense, but sometimes they seemed to get stuck to the top left of the ship, and wouldn't come back in until I changed direction.

[Lurk]

I like it a LOT  . For some reason, I keep going back to it. There's some zen involved in keeping the ship in balance. Really nice. Reminds me of old arcade games I used to play, where practice allowed you to outlast the kids with the seemingly infinite pocket change. It's going in my permanent 'games' folder.