Continuum

About the game

Continuum is a vertical shoot 'em up in the classic mould. Your small ship sits at the bottom of a tall, dark screen, waves of enemy fighters come in from above in formations, and you shoot them down, dodge the bullets and pick up what they drop. The screen is tall and narrow, like a game for a phone held upright, and the browser version keeps that shape and centres it in the window.

You have two weapons, a Vulcan and a Laser, and power-ups that raise the one you use through several levels, so a long run ends with a ship that fires a lot more than the one you started with. You also carry a few bombs, which clear the screen when things get out of hand, and a small number of lives. There are no image or sound files at all in the game: the ships, the stars and the explosions are drawn by code, and every sound effect and the menu music are synthesized as you play, which gives it a clean, retro feel.

It was made by a single developer with the help of an AI coding assistant, which the author discloses in the project, and released as free software. It is small, it starts at once and a run takes a few minutes, which suits a quick break.

Playing it here

Click Play and wait for the game to load (about 10 MB, downloaded only when you press the button, almost all of it the game engine). Press Enter or click Start Game on the title screen. Because the game is in portrait format, you will see black bars at the sides of a landscape window.

Controls

Tips

Keep moving. Standing still in front of a formation is the quickest way to lose a life; small, steady movements work better than rushing across the screen.

Save your bombs. A bomb clears the screen and is your emergency button; use it when you are about to be boxed in, not at the start of a wave.

Pick up the power-ups. They raise your weapon level, and the higher the level the easier the later waves become.

Try both weapons. The Vulcan and the Laser feel different, and one may suit your style better than the other.

FAQ

Does it work on a phone? The game was designed for a tall screen, but this page needs a keyboard to play.

Was the game made with AI? Yes. The author used an AI coding assistant to help write the code, and the project says so. The licence is clear and covers everything in the game.

Is it free to share? Yes. It is free software under the GNU GPL version 3.

Credits and licence

Continuum was made by phungs (stphung on GitHub), with the help of an AI coding assistant. The code is under the GNU General Public License, version 3; the game has no separate image, sound or font files, so the same licence covers what you see and hear. The source of this build is linked from this page. The game runs on Godot Engine 4.4.1, under the MIT licence.

Changes made for this site: the renderer is set to the browser-friendly Compatibility mode, the screen is shown whole in wide windows, a list of editor plugins that are not in the repository is removed, and the Quit button on the title screen is hidden because quitting only freezes a browser page. Nothing else in the game was changed. The licence text and the source of this build are linked from this page.