POLYBOIDS

POLYBOIDS is an arcade-style action space shooter made for the Pygame Community Summer Jam 2024.

The post-jam bugfix version only updates the loot tables, as they were configured wrong and made certain upgrades too rare and lasers were unobtainable. I would recommend playing the bugfix version for more fun.

The game is open source: https://github.com/Binary-Ninja/pygame-summer-jam-2024

Discord for Jam Judgement: BinaryNinja

Everything below is optional reading.

Tutorial

You don't need to read this to start playing the game.

Controls

You control the green arrow-like spaceship in the middle of the screen. The spaceship always faces the mouse pointer. Hold down left-click to accelerate towards the mouse pointer and fire your weapon.

Triangular indicators will appear around you to give you the direction and distance to offscreen enemies. By default, they appear when there are no enemies on the screen, but you can change this setting in the menu to make them always visible or never visible. Regardless of the menu setting, holding right-click will cause them to appear.

Gameplay

The colorful polygons are the polyboids. You must destroy all of them to advance to the next level. The more sides a polyboid has, the more health it has and the slower it moves. The color of the polyboid determines its behavior. There are five colors of polyboid and four shapes.

The star-shaped polyboids are drones. They always orbit their owner. Your drones are cyan, while the enemy drones are magenta. Destroying a polyboid with drones will capture those drones and make them yours.

When a polyboid is destroyed, it can drop a circular powerup. You can collide with them to pick them up, or shoot them for the same effect. Your drones can also pick up powerups for you. Powerups can give various benefits, like extra health, a shield, or turning your drones into turrets that shoot when you do.

Polyboids can spawn with shields. Their shields work the same as yours. A shield protects from 10 collisions, but does not protect from bullets (or your laser, if you can get one). The shield is cyan when at full strength and deep blue when it is near breaking. The only way to obtain the shield powerup or the drone shield powerup is to destroy a shielded polyboid.

Extras

Score is calculated using a formula that takes into account the polyboid's shape and color. Shielded polyboids give double the points. Score has no impact on gameplay.

If you die while shielded, your shield will carry over into the next game. This is considered a bug, but I encourage you to take advantage of it.

If you want an extra challenge, change the arena edge setting in the menu to "PORTAL" instead of "BOUNCE". Everything will warp to the other side of the arena instead of bouncing off of the arena edge.

If you are having trouble seeing what is happening on screen, try turning off arena effects in the menu. The background will become a solid color and there will be no more star particles in the background.

Press F2 to save a screenshot of the current frame to the game folder.

Press F3 to enter debug mode and see the FPS and collision circles of the game objects. Pressing the middle mouse button when in debug mode will set the wave to 100, which is far too laggy to be actually playable, so use that information as you will.

Reference

If you really want all of the details, here you go.

Polyboid Shape

The more health a polyboid has, the bigger it is and the slower it is.

DRONE = 2 HP

TRIANGLE = 3 HP

SQUARE = 4 HP

HEXAGON = 6 HP

OCTAGON = 8 HP

Polyboid Color

PLAYER - Green

You control the player.

PLAYER DRONE - Cyan

Orbits the player.

ENEMY DRONE - Magenta

Orbits an enemy. Does not drop powerups.

ASTEROID - White

Drifts randomly.

ORBITER - Yellow

Orbits a random point near the arena center.

RUNNER - Blue

Approaches player until it is within a certain distance, then flees. You might have to chase down the faster ones.

CHASER - Red

Constantly accelerates towards you.

GUNNER - Orange

Same as the Runner, but also fires bullets at you. These will bypass your shield! Gunners are the only enemy that drop the laser powerup.

Powerups

Ship Powerups

HEALTH - Green ship icon

Grants an extra health point.

THRUST - Orange ship icon

Doubles your thrust for fast maneuvering.

PHASE - Cyan ship icon

Hold left-click to phase through enemies and avoid collisions. Gunner bullets will still deal damage to you. Your ship will turn darker in color when phasing. The ship color will show how much phase power is left, with cyan being full and blue being almost empty.

SHIELD - Blue ship icon

Gives the player a shield good for 10 collisions. Does not block Gunner bullets. This powerup only drops from shielded enemies.

Bullet Powerups

All bullet upgrades are compatible with each other except for the laser.

OVERLOAD - Cyan circle

Bullets deal double damage and have a larger radius.

RAPID FIRE - Yellow circle

Firing rate is increased. Bullets have a smaller radius unless Overload is active.

HYPER - White circle

Bullet speed is doubled.

LASER - Red starburst

Fires a laser when thrusting instead of a gun. The laser has infinite reach but only lasts a few seconds. Use it wisely!

Drone Powerups

DRONE - Cyan drone icon

Grants the player an unshielded drone.

DRONE SHIELD - Blue drone icon

Grants a full shield to every player drone or turret. This powerup only drops from shielded polyboids.

TURRET - Green drone icon

Turns every player drone into a turret that fires the same bullets you do in the same direction, but at half of the rate of fire. Turrets are colored green instead of cyan.