LÖVE

Hi,

this is the first game I completed with löve. It`s a first generation style shoot em up.

Here is what it looks like:






The download for this game is in the attachment of this post.

Controls:

Keyboard: "z" to fire, directional buttons to move left or right

Mouse: left mousebutton down to fire, right mousebutton down to make
your spaceship follow your mousepointer to the left or right

Gamepad: "a","b","x" or "y" to fire, Dpad to move left or right

You cannot mix inputs. Once you start the game with an input device you are stuck to that input for the rest of your play. When the game is over and you are back to the titlescreen you can choose a different input for the next play.

About the game:

You will play through 29 regular levels before encountering a boss enemy in Level 30. After a short ending, you will then enter a endless game where levels will be picked at random out of 10 extra hard levels. This is where you keep playing for highscore.

There is also a cheat to start the game right with the random levels. I added the cheat because I found that those later levels are more intense and more fun. If you played the game the normal way you would likely have run out of most of your lifes before you even get to the fun part.

Here is how to start the game with the random level cheat:

Keyboard: Start the game by pressing "c" instead of fire

Mouse: Start the game by pressing the middle mousebutton (or by pressing
down the mousewheel) instead of pressing fire

Gamepad: Start the game by pressing a shoulderbutton instead of fire

I programmed this game in a little less than two weeks. The work on this project started on September 16th and ended on September 27th. The .exe was created on September 28th. I delayed releasing this game because I wanted to first test it on a Windows 10 system before posting it here.
I`m going to program more first generation style shoot em ups, but with a better quality than this one. The best inspiration I have for that, is the game Gorf on the Commodore 64. It has multiple different level themes, a boss level and an overall nice look and feel. I think it`s the best shoot em up of the first generation.
What I`m planning to do is to code an overall of 10 first generation style shoot em ups and sell those in a package. It`s a long way to go.

For now all there is to say is: Thank you for playing "Praying Mantis".

I testplayed a bit on Windows 10, it worked well and feels retro.
The first 3 levels felt bit slow/boring, so I went to the random levels.

The way to select input-methode is impossible to figure out without reading your explaination.
After starting the game I clicked it to get focus - not knowing that this would select mouse-input.
Maybe also show key-mapping ingame. I had to return to the thread a second time to figure out that Z is fire.
So I had to start the game 3 times before I could actually play, which is a high -and avoidable- barrier to players who might only be mildly interested.
Fullscreen would be nice.

Hello there

I was hoping that everyone who doesn't know the controls would go to the readme.txt to look it up. What's a worse problem than not knowing the controls right away is the confusion when people accidentally start the game with mouse-control and they might be wondering why nothing is working and think the game is broken. I did not see this coming.
I could be showing the controls in-game, but cannot show the full description of how the controls work on screen, and I don't think a short hint would prevent people from unintentionally starting the game with a mouse, as they might be clicking in the window right away before they would even have a chance to read the hint. I also don't think a short hint without further description would make it clear to players why this is happening.
I somehow don't want to put in the controls since I feel all it really does is to make the start screen look overloaded.
The only real "solution" I see would be to get rid of the mouse control (but I don't want to sacrifice the mouse control) or to maybe make the game able to react to all controls at once, so that the other controls are still working when the game was started with the mouse, which on the other hand may lead to chaotic results for simultaneous multiple inputs. With everything being considered, I might just keep it as it is, even though things are not ideal.

> Once you start the game by pressing fire on your device of choice,
you will then be restricted to that input device for the rest of your play.

This tripped me up the first time. Mouse controls are not intuitive and I dare say non-standard or expected. I'd consider simply removing that option but up to you of course.

I played to level 12 and enjoyed it. I think it needs to get harder faster or maybe I'm just awesome. Technically a job well done.