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Thwaite
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About the game
Thwaite is a missile-defence game. Incoming warheads streak down toward a row of ten houses and two silos, and you shoot them down with fireworks: put the crosshair where a missile is going to be, fire, and let the blast catch it. Each night is a series of waves, and the town has to hold out from Sunday to Saturday.
The twist is in the details. Each silo has its own button and a limited supply of rockets, balloons and split warheads release more missiles if you are slow, and the cursor accelerates and brakes, so short taps and long holds matter. A destroyed silo or house can be rebuilt between rounds, which keeps a bad night from ending the week.
Playing it here
This is a homebrew game made for the NES: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs here in jsnes, an NES emulator written in JavaScript. Click Play now and press Enter to get past the opening screens, then choose one player or two.
F2 saves the current state of the game in this browser and F4 brings it back. A gamepad also works. The 2-player game is cooperative, with one cursor each: the second player can use the numeric keypad or a second gamepad.
Photosensitivity warning: the game makes explosions and smoke look translucent by flickering them. The author warns that a small number of people have seizures when looking at flickering patterns; if that applies to you, talk to a health professional before playing.
Controls
| Key | NES button | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Arrow keys | Control Pad | move the aiming cursor |
| Z | B | fire from the left silo |
| X | A | fire from the right silo |
| Enter | Start | start, pause and resume |
| Shift or Ctrl | Select | end the game (practice mode only, while paused) |
| F2 / F4 | — | save / load the state |
Player 2 uses the numeric keypad: 8, 2, 4 and 6 to move, 7 or 9 to fire. In a 2-player game, both buttons of each controller fire from that player's silo.
A few things worth knowing
Lead your shots. A rocket takes a moment to arrive, so aim ahead of the missile, not at it.
One blast, several missiles. The explosion is wide. Aim where missile trails are about to cross and a single rocket can stop two or three of them.
Ammo is score. At the end of each round you score points for every house still standing and every rocket left in the silos, and nothing for the missiles you shoot down. Wasting rockets costs you.
Practice any wave. The title screen has a practice mode where you can pick any of the waves and which side of town to defend.
Credits and licence
Thwaite was programmed, drawn and scored by Damian Yerrick, with extra music by Ludwig van Beethoven. The game concept follows a classic arcade missile-defence game. It is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. The licence text and the complete source code of this release are linked from this page.