Porpoise Frenzy

Porpoise Frenzy is a space shooter game.

Setting:

The Porpoise is a new type of fighter craft designed for flight in atmospheres other than Earth.  You are its pilot, and you must test it against waves of enemies in this elaborate simulation built on Mars.  Can you reach 1000 points?

Ships and Hazards:

  • Saucer – The Saucer appears from the right side of the screen and fires green plasma.  One shot is enough to take it out, and they reward you with 20 points.
  • Launcher – The Launcher appears from the top-right of the screen in 15 second intervals.  It fires three missiles at once.  They take 15 shots to destroy, and they reward you with 40 points.  Destroying one of their missiles rewards you with 5 points.
  • Bomber – Bombers appear from the top left of the screen in 30 second intervals, and it drops bombs at regular intervals.  If you attempt to destroy it, watch out for its laser cannon.  Bombers take 25 shots to destroy, and they reward you with 60 points.
  • Meteors – Meteors appear when you break 400 points.  They rain down from the top of the screen, so watch out.  Each meteor you destroy rewards you with 5 points.
  • Lock-on Missile – Lock-on Missiles appear beyond 800 points from the bottom right of the screen.  Be careful as they move fast, so take them out before it gets too close.  Lock-on Missiles reward you with 10 points when you destroy them.

Tips:

  • Except for the asteroid paths, nothing in this game is random.  Memorizing when certain hazards appear is key to progression.
  • The other enemy ships are only out for themselves and will destroy one another if they get caught in the crossfire.  Use that to your advantage when they become overwhelming.

Development

Porpoise Frenzy was created in 2005 as one of my first shoot ’em up games, but not the first.  Previously, I had only made shooter games that only took place on one screen at a time since I didn’t know how to make the screen scroll with your character at the time.  The idea for Porpoise Frenzy came about when I wanted to make a game with an automatically scrolling background, taking inspiration from various other browser games.  And because I had only been making games for a mere few months by this time, I aimed to just make it very short.  Even with my skill level back then, the game took only a couple hours to make.

Years later, after I finished Droplet and Seedling, I was fatigued from working on giant games and I wanted to do something small.  I couldn’t find the original .cca for Porpoise Frenzy, so I just went ahead and remade the entire game from scratch.  Since I had a compiled .exe of the original to go by, it did not take very long even with the extra work put into the graphics and the coding.