BitGlint Games, the developer behind the excellent Atic Atac homage Melkhior's Mansion, has just released a new Space Invaders clone for the Playdate.
The game, which is called Retro Invaders, is the developer's first for Panic's little yellow machine and is apparently a test, with the developer hoping to create some more complicated projects for the device in the future.
Similar to Taito's arcade game from 1978, it sees players controlling a spaceship positioned at the bottom of the screen, with the goal being to eliminate the aliens that slowly descend from above and shoot UFOs that appear to earn bonus points toward their score.
As the game progresses, the speed of the alien's movements will get faster and faster, with players having to eradicate them before they collide with their ship and claim a life.
It is the second Space Invaders clone that we're personally aware of for the small machine, with the first being oscarbraindead's 2022 title Onebitinvaders, which also included an option to control the character with a crank.
BitGlint Games' Richard Jordan wrote about the project on its itch.io page:
"Retro Invaders is a small experimental project for the Playdate. It's my first project on the platform and has served as a test bed for learning the C API and creating my own dev framework with a view to writing more stuff for this excellent little device.
It's a fully playable version of Space Invaders with simple power ups and increasing difficulty. The game is free to download and quite fun to play."
Right now, the game is not currently available on the Playdate catalog but can be downloaded now from itch.io and sideloaded to the device, just in case you're in the mood for "simple shooty fun".