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Amethyst Waters
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About the game
Amethyst Waters is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up set deep underwater. Your little submarine drifts through dark caverns whose walls are generated anew on every run, while fish, tougher fish, shooting fish, snails and guards come at it in waves. The deeper you go, the busier it gets, until a giant anglerfish shows up for the final fight.
Destroyed enemies leave behind purple amethysts, and sometimes a repair pickup that restores part of the submarine's health bar. The amethysts are the way to grow stronger: collect enough in a single dive and the game unlocks a new weapon that stays with you on later attempts. The counter under the health bar shows how many you have and how many the next weapon needs.
The game was made in a few days for the 2020 Spring Lisp Game Jam and is written in Fennel, a Lisp language that runs inside TIC-80.
Playing it here
Amethyst Waters was made for TIC-80, a fantasy console: an imaginary 1980s-style computer with a 240 by 136 screen and 16 colours, for which independent developers write new games. It runs here in the official TIC-80 web player. Click Play, wait for the short intro and press Z on the title screen.
Unlocked weapons are saved in this browser, so they are still there the next time you play. Esc opens the TIC-80 menu. A gamepad works directly, and on touch screens an on-screen D-pad and buttons appear.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | move the submarine up, down, left and right |
| Z (A button) | start; fire forward (hold to keep firing); play again |
| X (B button) | fire up and down at the same time |
| A (X button) | previous weapon |
| S (Y button) | next weapon |
| Esc | TIC-80 menu |
A few things worth knowing
Do not get pinned against the left edge. The cave keeps scrolling, and if a rock wall pushes the submarine into the left side of the screen with nowhere to go, the dive ends at once, whatever your health.
Use X for enemies above and below. Many enemies come from the floor and ceiling of the cave. The vertical shot hits both directions at once, which is often safer than lining up a forward shot.
Your first goal is 15 amethysts. Collecting 15 in one dive unlocks the blue shot, which hits harder. After that the counter shows the target for the triple shot, which fires three bolts in a spread.
Credits and licence
Amethyst Waters was created by Stefan Devai, who made the code, the graphics, the sound and the music. It is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3. The code inside the cartridge is minified to fit TIC-80's size limit, so the complete, readable source of version 0.9.5 is hosted alongside the game. It runs here in the TIC-80 web player (MIT licence). The licence text and the source code are linked from this page.