Killer Robots - Illuminations

- version 0.3.1 - 9.9 MB

- 2005 OMG Cup - 4.7 MB

Game Description:
Illuminations is an action game centered around fireworks. The goal is to shoot the rising rockets in order to set them off. Do a good job and you'll create a spectacular show of light. Miss too many rockets, and it's game over. Enemies will spawn to slow down your attempts. Shoot them as well to add to the show, and to prevent them from stopping you. Each rocket you miss will lower the crowd excitement meter, as will each stun shot you receive from enemies. Hitting rockets will raise the meter. If the meter reaches zero, it's game over.

An Experiment in Iterative Game Development:
Once upon a time, there was a game made for a Mac game development contest. It won no awards. However, it was reasonably well liked and the author would receive the occasional email. Usually asking for the fullscreen mode to be added back in. "Hold your horses!" the author would cry. "There's a new version coming that will fix every bug and add a bazillion new features. Just you wait and see!"

But then the author just played World of Warcraft instead. Whoops.

More than two years passed, and the author started to think that maybe he should actually finish that game that was actually pretty fun. However, with so many projects to work on it could be quite some time until the game was finished. The emails would continue! Wait, what if the author merely released what he had? Surely something is better than nothing? And he could release new versions regularly as features were added, instead of waiting months or years for the whole game to be completed. It could work...

The Rules of the Experiment:

New releases have no set schedule. They could be days, weeks, or months apart. We'll try to make sure they're not years this time.
Release changes can be as small as "Adjusted pixel #153 on enemy #2" or as large as "Gameplay change: Illuminations is now a complex geopolitcal simulation of communist Russia."
Only the newest version will be available for download, with the exception of the original version from 2005.
Each version shall be as bug free as possible. Fixing bugs will be given priority over new features.
Fnord.
Illuminations is currently free. Play it all you want. Give copies to your friends. We reserve the right to later declare the experiment over, the game finished, and to become evil capitalist dictators and start charging for the game.
You do not talk about fight club.
The experiment starts with version 0.2, and goes up from there.

Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later
OpenGL compatible video card

What's New in 0.3.1:

Fixed multiple bugs related to pausing including: 1) the window focus/mouse click bug, 2) strange window movements while paused, 3) the mouse hiding in the wrong spot, 4) laser sound effects continuing to play through the pause, 5) graphics continuing to update through the pause.
The view now dims while paused.

Screenshots:

Contact:
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Marriage proposals? You know where to find me. bachus@killerrobots.com