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Quasar Rush
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About the game
Quasar Rush is a vertical shoot 'em up about diving into the bright core of a quasar, where something is waiting that might be better left alone. Your ship sits near the bottom of the screen and only moves sideways, while enemies pour in from above in waves: drifting derelict ships, kamikazes that dive straight at you, gunships that stop to aim, bouncing creatures, organic blobs and seekers that chase you down. Every few waves a boss fills the top of the screen.
You never press a fire button. The ship shoots constantly, so the whole game is about where you put it: in front of the targets that matter and out of the way of incoming bullets and bodies. Destroyed enemies leave experience capsules behind, and as you level up the ship moves faster, fires more often and shoots faster bullets. At certain levels it gains an extra gun.
The side panel shows your health, experience, level, the current wave and a saved score. Clear the last wave and the game starts over in a harder mode, with a rocket added to your arsenal, for as long as you survive.
Playing it here
Quasar Rush 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 was Jaded Puma's first complete game, and it runs here in the official TIC-80 web player.
The game is controlled only with the mouse or by touch, so it needs one of the two: the keyboard and gamepad do nothing in it. Click Play, then click or tap the title screen to start. The score shown on the title screen is kept in this browser; in this version it is the score of your most recent run, not necessarily your best. Esc opens the TIC-80 menu. The game's texts are in English.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Click or tap (title screen) | start the game |
| Hold in the lower part of the play area and slide | move the ship left or right, toward the pointer |
| Release | the ship stops |
| (automatic) | the ship fires on its own |
| Esc | TIC-80 menu |
A few things worth knowing
Steer from below. The ship only follows the pointer while the button is held down in the lower part of the play area, around the green bar with the knob. Clicking near the top of the screen does nothing, so keep the pointer low, where it does not hide the enemies either.
Catch what falls. Destroyed enemies drop pickups that drift down the screen and get pulled into the ship once it is close: experience capsules, the occasional instant level-up and hearts that restore health. Levelling up is the only way to get stronger, and the extra guns arrive at levels 5, 25, 50 and 99.
Keep moving. Your ship has a single long health bar rather than lives, and every hit and collision takes a bite out of it. Short slides from side to side dodge most shots, and parking under a boss is the fastest way to lose.
Credits and licence
Quasar Rush was created by Jaded Puma (Esteban RPM), who made the code, the graphics, the sound and the music, using lazylib-tic, his own MIT-licensed library for TIC-80 games, which is built into the cartridge. The author thanks NotYet and Jampoy for testing. It is free software under the MIT licence, chosen by the author in the header of the cartridge published on tic80.com. It runs here in the TIC-80 web player (MIT licence). The licence text is linked from this page.