Invaders: Evolution

by vilya
Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.90
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.04
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.28
Theme★★★★★★★★★★1.88
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.29
Audio★★★★★★★★★★1.12
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.59
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.77
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★94%
An exploration of the sociopolitics behind the infamous Space Invaders war. :-)

Use the arrow keys to move left or right & space to fire. Press 'p' to pause the game at any time, or 'Esc' to quit.

There are two possible endings...

Note: sometimes you may see letters instead of the alien spaceships. If this happens to you, clearing your browser cache and reloading may fix the problem for you.

Note 2: some players found a bug where the game would freeze on them during the first level with the green aliens; this should now be fixed, but let me know if you still get it.

Note 3: I've added a post-compo version with a fix for the alien spawning logic. I'll be adding a few more fixes over the next couple of days as well.

Comments34

jtoper
jtoper27 Aug 2012, 01:43
I like it! It's a really good challenge
wibblymat27 Aug 2012, 11:29
Ha, "Trade Envoy" my bum. Let the guy on the first level get to the bottom to see what happened and I lost anyway! :D
vilya
vilyaauthor27 Aug 2012, 11:49
He was selling high powered radios which just happen to operate at a frequency that turns human brains to jelly - easy mistake to make when you don't know the biology of your customers. :-)
headchant
headchant27 Aug 2012, 12:43
Those damn aliens again :)
LuizHGMonclar
LuizHGMonclar27 Aug 2012, 22:25
Hahahha, I love these "alternative explanations" to why stuff we know happened, really loved the humor :) had fun! Great game :)
nseward
nseward27 Aug 2012, 22:39
I loved the back story.
panda
panda27 Aug 2012, 22:41
It's weird, running it on IE10 I get letters instead of the invader graphics (?)
dalbinblue
dalbinblue27 Aug 2012, 22:41
Hehe, liked the humor.
kevincorrigan27 Aug 2012, 22:46
I really like space invaders so this was awesome, unfortunately it completely froze up on me in the first round with the green aliens. Great Game non the less!:)
vilya
vilyaauthor27 Aug 2012, 22:52
panda: Sorry about that, I tested in Chrome, Firefox and Safari but not IE. I was using a custom font, via the @font-face css attribute, to draw the invaders. I guess IE doesn't support it yet. I'll update the entry details to mention that.

kevincorrigan: sorry for the freeze, I'll try to figure out what happened and fix it. Thanks for letting me know!
CataclysmicKnight
CataclysmicKnight27 Aug 2012, 23:49
It was quite fun! I got the freeze during the green/friendly alien portion as well, both times that I played it actually... And I'll admit I let the first alien get all the way to the bottom to see what would happen too :)
vilya
vilyaauthor28 Aug 2012, 13:08
I think I've fixed that freeze now. Thanks for letting me know about it!
Drabiter
Drabiter28 Aug 2012, 14:22
It is easy, until you told me to not shoot the green ones :D
panda
panda29 Aug 2012, 03:21
Love the humor! The game is fun, and I really liked how on the first three levels there's something different every time! It didn't work on IE9, btw, I saw letters instead of the symbols.
schnerble
schnerble29 Aug 2012, 13:01
Quite fun - and a nice different style for the story :) Generally it's not too hard because of the number of shots you can shoot at once (except that avoiding hitting things can be hard!) - but in a couple of cases the alien phalanx ended up so wide they just went straight down, and it was almost impossible :) Good fun though!
vilya
vilyaauthor29 Aug 2012, 13:06
Schnerble: the spawning logic is really buggy. The aliens are supposed to turn up in nice regular rows like in the original, but I didn't manage to find the bug before the deadline. I guess it adds to the challenge though. :-)
josefnpat
josefnpat29 Aug 2012, 19:43
This was very funny!
I like how stuff keeps popping up :)
gnx29 Aug 2012, 21:14
Nice how you changed the basic game by putting some backstory and context in it. I actually found the familiar gameplay more engaging because of that.
YSelf Tool30 Aug 2012, 21:36
I've lost... as everybody should do in a good ldgame.
Great retro graphics, nice dialogues, hard to play, good controls (as known since many years), great game!
Some sounds/music would be nice, but is not really needed.
dredlockz
dredlockz1 Sep 2012, 19:07
haha, really funny story between levels.
Although its pretty much space invaders other than that, and not related to the theme :(
Beep2Bleep1 Sep 2012, 19:11
Fun good shooter, thanks for making this!
vilya
vilyaauthor1 Sep 2012, 22:13
dredlockz: um... it's an evolution of the original game formula...maybe? :-)
lekochen
lekochen4 Sep 2012, 04:07
I like the dialogues between levels, but it's too hard!
marudziik
marudziik4 Sep 2012, 08:53
I think theme-wise it's a little stretch, but the game is pretty awesome. I love the humour and story. The game gets quite hard with the introduction of green aliens, so I didn't manage to beat it. Very good entry though!
mohammad5 Sep 2012, 02:57
I really liked how you gave the aliens a perspective instead of bashing their heads without reason!
Arc5 Sep 2012, 07:30
Invaders with politics! Cool. You also captured the essence of superior firepower verses daunting numbers. Gave my space bar a real work out...
Martin Vilcans5 Sep 2012, 11:27
That's a good story! (For being Space Invaders that is.) Every level is a bit different, so I didn't get bored. The green aliens were a good twist, though it had been easy up to that level, it suddenly got hard. I looked in the source to see how the game ends. :-) Nice idea.

The one thing that's missing is sound.

You may be interested in this comic: http://elcomics.tumblr.com/
vilya
vilyaauthor5 Sep 2012, 14:23
That comic is awesome! Thanks for the link!

With the green aliens, it doesn't matter if you shoot some of them - so long as you don't shoot too many of them. You win when the ratio of green aliens to white aliens is high enough; and if it sinks too low, you go to the other ending...
harusame
harusame5 Sep 2012, 15:31
Gode challenge ! I win \o/

It's just a pittye there is no audio.

Fun game.
darkshadow
darkshadow6 Sep 2012, 19:19
Great idea to add a story to space invaders! I see that unlike the original the games speed wasn't limited by the processor speed (lucky or the aliens will reach the bottom in moments with modern computers!) Anyway the green aliens added a real challenge, and I felt bad if I hit them. Spawn is buggy, and I lost during a cut-scene where I couldn't shoot which felt a bit unfair :'(
johnfn
johnfn10 Sep 2012, 10:26
LOL at your response to wibblymat, excellent. This game too was pretty funny. I lost at the end, I guess because I didn't save enough green guys, but it wasn't very clear. The tie-in to the theme was a bit questionable, but oh well, the game was fun :)
hnjslater
hnjslater17 Sep 2012, 08:45
Good fun game but not really related to the theme and, well, to be very honest, an awful lot like a game from the seventies I've played once or twice before. Good effort though, shame about the spawning bug.
alwaysinbeta17 Sep 2012, 21:07
So that's why those aliens kept invading! Loved the back story and the friendly invaders. The gameplay itself felt a little sluggish.

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