A downloadable game

Magnetar is a one-man game made for Global Game Jam 2022 (Game Page Here), based on the theme of Duality. It's a top-down SHMUP/Bullet Hell where the enemies shoot magnetic bullets at your ship that - unfortunately - is also magnetized. Luckily, you can flip the polarity of your ship, allowing you to repel the bullets you were just moments ago attracting. Beware, though, that enemies use both polarities themselves, so you need to time your polarity flips well to avoid getting a face full of bullets!

Or maybe you don't want to play alone? Then enter the Dual Ship mode. Here, there are two controllable ships, but of fixed polarity. Each ship needs to co-operate with the other to protect them from incoming projectiles while making sure not to accidentally throw an errant bullet in their direction.

Controls

In Magnetar, your ships shoot automatically. Thankfully, your own bullets are not magnetic, so there's no need to worry about accidentally bending your bullets away from your target.

Single Ship Mode / Dual Ship Mode Player 1

  • WASD - Move the ship around the screen.
  • Left Shift - Boost - While held, your ship moves significantly faster.
  • Space - While held, the polarity of your ship is flipped. This only works in Single Ship mode.
  • Esc - Pauses the game.

Dual Ship Mode Player 2

  • Arrow Keys - Move the ship around the screen.
  • Right Shift/Numpad 0 - Boost

Note: While I have configured gamepad support, it's completely untested. Try at your own risk.

Code Repository

As this was a Global Game Jam project, it's fully open source. You can find the GitHub repository here.

Credits

All code and assets were created by myself (Check out my website here!) using the Unity game engine. The only non-Unity library uses is the Unity Spline Editor by vvrvvd

Download

Download
Magnetar.zip 38 MB

Install instructions

Simply unpack the zip into a folder and run Magnetar.exe. If you get a Windows SmartScreen popup, just click 'More Info' then 'Run Anyway'. This is because, as expected, Magnetar isn't an exe Windows has seen much before outside of my own computer

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