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CosmicPods
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About the game
CosmicPods is a small, quick shoot-'em-up. You play a squid, drawn with a few letters and symbols, floating through space while stars stream past. Octopuses drift in from the right edge of the screen, and every one you hit adds a point to the score in the corner. Touch one and the screen flashes GAME OVER.
The game has no levels to choose; it simply gets harder as your score climbs. At first a single octopus crosses the screen at a time. After a few hits more of them come at once, they begin to fire small round shots aimed at you, and those shots speed up, until eight octopuses can be on screen together. A run lasts anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, and the only goal is a bigger number than last time.
Playing it here
This is a homebrew game made for the Arduboy, the open, credit-card-sized handheld with a tiny black-and-white screen: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs here in Ardens, an Arduboy emulator. Click Play, wait for the short jingle on the title screen, and the first octopus is already on its way.
The game does not keep a high score, so every run starts from zero. F2 saves the complete state of the game at any moment and F4 brings it back. A gamepad works too.
Controls
| Key | Arduboy button | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Arrow keys | D-pad | move the squid in any direction |
| Z or X | A or B | fire (one shot per press); start again after a game over |
| F2 / F4 | — | save / load the state |
A few things worth knowing
Tap, do not hold. Each press fires one shot, and only four can be on the screen at a time. Rapid, well-aimed taps work better than spraying.
Stay on the left. Octopuses only shoot while they are still to your right, so keeping back gives you room to dodge and more time to aim.
The first shots are a warning. The octopuses start firing at a score of 3. From then on, keep moving between shots; standing still for long is how most runs end.
Credits and licence
CosmicPods was made in 2017 by cubic9com, who drew everything in code, from the squid and the octopuses to the starfield and the sound effects. It is free software under the BSD 3-clause licence and uses the Arduboy2 library by Scott Allen (BSD). The licence texts are linked from this page.