"Oh dear. A critical software bug has caused the autopilot of your Maxikill 9000 advanced space-fighter to go do-lally, and the only control still working is the weapon fire button. Death is certain, but how many mutant alien scum can you take with you?"

About five years ago I was looking for a jam to take part in that would motivate me to knock out a quick little game and give me the sense of having actually completed something. I came across 1-Bit Clicker Jam, the rules for which stated that the games should have 1-bit (ie, two colour, normally black and white) colour and be controlled only with the mouse. I think the intention was that it should also be an idle game along the lines of Cookie Clicker but I didn't quite get that at the time and had (and still have) a hard time grasping what actually defines a clicker game. I guess one where there is a very thin layer of strategy on top of a game loop that just involves clicking the mouse over and over to progress?

Anyway, I had an idea for a game that met the technical restrictions if not the spirit of the jam, but which was, in retrospect, VASTLY overspecced for the limited amount of time that I had. I set to work on it, and while it was coming along fairly well, as the end of the two-week period drew closer it was obvious that I was nowhere near being able get it into a submittable state.

(I did, eventually, finish that game, but I'll write about that one later.)

So on the night of the deadline I sat down, cracked open Unity, and threw together Quickshot 2 Turbo in a couple of hours.

Pulse-pounding action!

It's basically a top-down shmup where the only control over your ship is to fire by clicking the mouse button. Your vessel is out of control and lurching from one side of the screen to the other, so it's all about timing your shots just right to hit the enemies before they smash into you. To discourage the player from just hammering the fire button, an energy bar at the top of the screen depletes every time you shoot and takes a little while to recharge, so mindlessly spamming shots can result in you running out of energy and being unable to fire when you need it the most. There's a score multiplier that you can build up by killing enemies in quick succession, and powerups drop down the screen every so often. Shooting them grants your little vessel a series of upgrades, like double-shots, side-shots and so forth. There are only a handful of enemy waves that repeat infinitely, but they gain more health over time until it's just not practical to actually kill them and you are inevitably overwhelmed. It does suffer somewhat from the "Gradius Effect", where you can be doing quite well on a tricky level then lose a life, which causes you to lose all your powerups and inevitably lose the rest of your lives quite quickly because you've gone from a fire-spitting angel of destruction to a wimpy pea-shooter.

Ok, it still doesn't meet the spirit of the jam, but it does have 1-bit graphics and is controlled entirely by mouse clicks. And while it's not much good, I think it's not bad for the amount of time I spent on it. Oh, and you can play it in your browser right now, if you like.

And the name? It's not like there was a Clickshot 1 for it to be a sequel to. Well, retrogamers of a certain pedigree will recognize it as a homage to one of the greatest controllers there ever was: the Quickshot 2 Turbo.

Look at those sexy studs!

(If you like the basic idea of this game, it's not a million miles away from the far far better Switch 'n' Shoot)

#clickshot2turbo #gamejams #mygames