Dr Break Boom Invaders

by jimbly

Screenshot: Our protagonist Jose gets ready to square off against the Elephant in the room

No AI was used in the making of this game.

An unholy amalgamation of Dr Mario, Breakout, Kaboom, and Space Invaders. Within the limitation of the 80x25 character DOS VGA text mode.

Controls: Keyboard or gamepad

Tips
* You get extra lives at 200pts, 500pts, 900pts, etc

Links
* HTML5(WebGL): dashingstrike.com/LudumDare/LD60/
* Source Code: Jimbly/LD60-break-invaders

Screenshots

Screenshot: Jose looks very confused after being defeated by The Doctor

Screenshot: Take your time in this turn-based version of arcade classics

*Development Notes*

I wasn't quite sure what to do this jam, so my initial plan was to make some minigames/old games and see if they could be controlled simultaneously, and then use that as a sub-mechanic in the scope of a bigger game. The minigames kinda got away from me, so I ended up just making them the whole game, and spent a bunch of time making them interact with each other.

The actual, classic DOS VGA font, which I've used in the past, is 9x16, which has weird tiling issues with the dither blocks, so I just gave up on it this time and used a similar old 8x16 font that IBM PCs used in some display modes, just not the classic 80x25 DOS text mode that I'm, otherwise, emulating here.

Tools Used
* TheDRAW (last updated in 1993, now that's some _Old Tech_)
* Custom Engine: GLOV.js
* IBM VGA 8x16 font
* Classic 16-color VGA palette
* Dragon Synth and 1BITDRAGON

Also touchups in:
* Audacity
* Aseprite

Comments9

Nitesh19 Oct 2026, 07:37

Damn fun to play! Best part is when elements from one game go into the other!

INCD02119 Oct 2026, 08:00

I new about stress before.. But damn 😆
Very nice idea, and execution. 👍

jacobwinters20 Oct 2026, 03:32

Love how I have to continually choose a game to neglect for a while so I have enough attention to split between the others. Invaders killed me most often; I could always send pills from Dr. Mario into Kaboom as extra HP, and blocks in Dr. Mario never built up fast enough to be a threat when the Breakout ball would make a trip through every so often. Probably should've directed the ball over to Invaders more.

High score 9196. Feels like it has a really high skill ceiling by game jam standards, and I'm nowhere near it.

kaliuresis20 Oct 2026, 17:44

Funny concept! It was fun figuring out how to "cheat" in each minigame, invaders definitely felt the hardest since even when you get the ball in there it requires micromanagement to keep it bouncing, in addition to it having a slow movement speed so last moment saves are harder. All of the other minigames felt like they had downtime where they could be safely ignored.

adam-gould20 Oct 2026, 19:16

Oh boy my brain hurts now. Great stuff, the CRT effect is... *chef's kiss*

Jimblyauthor20 Oct 2026, 22:20

@nitesh Thanks for playing! Yeah, the elements going from one game to another wasn't even part of my original plan, but pivot during the jam, and I'm glad I did!

@incd021 I'm sorry to have caused you stress -_-

@jacobwinters Yeah, Invaders is the easiest to die in, multiple times I considered give you multiple HP in that one, but it didn't seem quite as true to the original, and it's good to have some impending doom, I think =). Very nice score!

@kaliuresis Also a very nice score! Luckily if the ball is in Invaders I don't count it against you if you miss it (same with the falling blocks, where there's no way to catch it), but Invaders still needs a lot of attention =)

@adam-gould Thanks for playing, and sorry about your brain.

OadT21 Oct 2026, 10:04

Somehow my first run went pretty well 😄 Maybe my health values at the end are interesting for you:

Some notes:
* It was a nice twist when the wall started to break. But it made Dr. Mario basically a non issue
* Kaboom was pretty easy, I didn't fully understand when you actually get game over there
* Space Invaders is (as already mentioned by others) the hardest one. I actually ignored it for the most part at the begining, because I thought it would solve itself with time. But then noticed halfway through my run that I only have one heart left there and had to put some focus there 😄
* The slow movement in Invaders felt off. Even when I focused my intention there the movement didn't seem right

Cool entry!

Frib21 Oct 2026, 11:51

I had a chuckle when my breakout ball broke out of its lane and started wrecking other stuff. It turned an already chaotic game into something more with extra strategy. Juggling all the lanes at the same time was hard and stressful, I didn't expect to lose due to space invaders but somehow I did, because I was too focused on the other games and trying to get the ball into dr mario since that was easier to solve than waiting for RNG colors while timing it with the other lanes.

Really fun combination of games but I don't think I'm going to try and beat the current high score lol

NonDev21 Oct 2026, 17:52

I had a real blast with this. I'm a sucker for the aesthetic. (Thank you for offering a setting to turn CRT filter off though!) It's such a relief when you finally get some walls down so the ball can wander off and let you focus on the other lanes more for a while. My brain also appreciated the rising-tone for score combo (I think I hit +30 or something at one point?).

Really great entry!

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