Z-Alpha
A downloadable game for Windows
Updated: A second version of the playble demo is now available. Two levels of the first World are now fully playable! (Windows only)
Z-Alpha is a side scrolling shoot'em'up game! You will need your best flying skills to avoid getting killed and sucessfully complete each of the levels.
Features:
- Wide variety of enemies (including bosses).
- Power-ups (fire power, speed up, weapon add-ons) and a well known shooting mechanic (hold down FIRE button to charge weapon).
- Selectable game difficulty.
- Keyboard (left, right, up, down, left-control or Space to shoot, and Z/X to select to direction of 3-way shoot power up) and a wide variety of controllers are supported.
Please let me know what you thing about Z-Alpha :D
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Z-Alpha devlog 3Jun 30, 2022
- Z-Alpha devlog 2Apr 19, 2022
- Z-Alpha devlog 1Jun 15, 2021
Comments
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Really polished look and feel! The only aspects I could potentially point out are design related, such as spawning enemies behind the player's ship even though there is no powerup that allows shooting backwards. Also, while it seemed weird at first to have a regenerating life system similar to something out of an fps, I feel like there could be potentially some interesting ideas to be explored around it, such as allowing life to regenerate faster if the shooting button is not being pressed. That said, I really appreciate the fact that the life bar changes color, making it really easy to gauge the ships current state at a glance.
Anyway, ramblings aside, really looking forward to play a more developed version of this game!
Hi!
Many thanks for testing Z-Alpha and sending your feedback, it really helps :)
I'll look into your suggestions, the possibility to regenerate shields faster if the user isn't shooting seems a very nice one :D
Awesome shoot em up demo=LOVE IT!!!, I look forward to the full release, Excellent work :)
Hi, thanks a lot for your kind words! I love shoot em ups :) I hope to release a new demo soon :)
Great design and nice mechanics! This game is featured on my Week's Top 5!
Take a look!
Hi! Thank you very much :)
Looking great! Needs a bit of info on the controls though I can't shoot :')
Oh it's Ctrl to shoot. A bit of an unconventional key to shoot. Consider using the spacebar and 'Z' or 'X' to shoot as well.
Some more feedback I can give is to add a sound to the power charge with a rising pitch to give some audio feedback to the player.
Make sure the player does not spawn on top of a solid object after dying. That happened to me and my ship got imideately destroyed again.
Hi! Thanks for your feedback and support :D
You're right, the game needs some info about controls. Maybe a panel showing the controls mapping would help.
I'm avoiding checkpoints that make the player to return to a previous point. Right now, when the player is destroyed it is immediately spawned on the left side of the screen and the shield is turned on. This way the ship doesn't collide with anything for a few seconds and the user can avoid the ship to get stuck while the shield is on. Probably it's not the best and obvious way to respawn the ship... I'll look into it, thanks for pointing that out.
No problem :)