Cyloid

About the game

Each level is an arena crossed by bands of walls and populated by colored diamond-shaped targets that bounce around. Destroy all of them to move on to the next level. Every few seconds a bright yellow boss appears from one side of the screen and flies straight at your tank; shooting it only makes it explode and reappear later, so the real job is to dodge it.

There are eight levels, each with its own colors, wall layout and speed, and the walls get denser as you advance. Touching a wall or the boss costs a life, and you have three. Reach 99 points to win.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Atari 2600: a new game by independent developers for the 1977 console, not a commercial release. It runs here in Stellerator, an Atari 2600 emulator written in JavaScript. Click Play now; Space skips the intro, and the game starts as soon as you move the tank.

There are no save states on this platform: like on the real console, a game lasts as long as you keep playing, and P pauses it. A gamepad works too.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Hit streaks pay more. The first target hit is worth 1 point, the next 2, and so on up to 5 per hit. The streak resets when a shot hits a wall or leaves the screen.

The last targets speed up. When only one or two targets are left in a level, they move at double speed.

You get a moment of safety. After losing a life the tank comes back at the bottom center with a short period of invincibility.

Shots stop at walls. Line up through the gaps between wall bands before firing.

Credits and licence

Cyloid was designed and programmed in 6502 assembly by Keith Adler and released under the MIT licence. The licence text is linked from this page.