Fanterra: Alternative Oblivion [Demo]
Something strange is afoot in Miami.
The shadows outside seem darker, appliances aren't acting quite right, and, like a guillotine, hanging in the dark of the night sky is a pale and certain dread, a bleak promise spoken in the language of fear, a voice, lost in the wind, whispering a single thing: the end is near.
Mal would much rather stay inside and ignore all this depressing nonsense, but her boss annoyingly wants her to do something about it. What a hassle! At least she can take out her frustration on the way; the worlds beyond the veil of Reality are full of ill-tempered weirdos looking to pick a fight: ghosts and gods, myths and monsters, the occasional small child; Mal is going to have her hands full, but in the face of this pseudo-apocalyptic threat, she'll need to overcome it all if she wants to get paid.
Or, y'know, save the world. That too.
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Hello! Nice to meet you.
This is Fanterra: Alternative Oblivion, a browser PICO-8 shooting game. It's currently only a demo, so please wait patiently for the full release, whenever it may happen. In the meantime, you can play this demo over and over again. Perhaps, if you play nothing but this demo, the game will come out faster... (it won't)
The inspirations behind this game are pretty obvious, so I'm sure many of you already know what to expect, but in case you don't, this is a game about girls shooting each other with beautiful, horrible, very hard to dodge bullets. If you shoot the other girls better than they shoot you, then you win. It's blisteringly difficult, and you may throw your keyboard a few times, but it's a fun time if you're the right kind of crazy. If you're more sound of mind on the other hand, you should still find a good time in the kinder difficulties, or the few accessibility options in the Settings menu.
Shooting is a simple thing:
Controls:
Arrow Keys: Move
Z: Shoot/Select
Shooting shoots. Girls love shooting. It's like enrichment for us. Nature is fascinating.
Shooting slows your character down, so stop to move quickly.
X: Bomb/Cancel/Hold to Skip Banter
Clears all bullets on screen, and deals lots of damage to enemies. It's a panic button through and through.
Bombs cost one Option (or 1.00 POW) to use.
Enter: Pause the game.
The pause menu has some helpful options to know about:
- Return to Menu: Returns to the title screen. 'Reset Cart' will also do this.
- Retry from Start: Restarts the current run with the same Arms and settings.
The in-game Manual should fill you on most of the other important information you'll need. ...What, you thought I'd write all that stuff here, too? That'd be like writing two manuals, which really is just an excessive number of manuals to have. Sorry, but I'm a busy girl.
It's a derivative work, obviously, but I still hope this game can prove itself to you on its own merits. I think there's something special here. I want to show it to people.
Do your best!
~Pastel
Status | In development |
Platforms | HTML5 |
Release date | Dec 06, 2024 |
Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (4 total ratings) |
Author | Pastel |
Genre | Shooter |
Made with | PICO-8 |
Tags | Bullet Hell, Music, PICO-8, Shoot 'Em Up |
Average session | About a half-hour |
Languages | English |
Inputs | Keyboard, Gamepad (any) |
Development log
- Bug Fixes and Other ThingsDec 24, 2024
Comments
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THIS IS SO AMAZING WHAT LIKE GOSH WHAT DO I EVEN FOCUS ON HERE
first of all music is so so wonderful- THE ART IS SO PRETTY, Such a good grasp of color, the readability with the backdrops and UI can suffer at times? But hoenstly make a bullethell game with such a small pixel size playable, LET STAND FUN AND FAIR FEELING, Is such an amazing feat!!! I've tried to get into Touhou in the past, and you do feel the inspirations, but still I think this can stand on its own for the amazing art and music alone! So so pretty, every screenshotjust bursting with colour and impossible patterns, and the affordance of what projectiles do what (The pickups, player projectiles, and enemy hurty bullets) is also so so well done, I think the rule is that enemy projectiles have a white dot in the centre? But honestly dont know for sure, its just so amazing though how readable the game is when you get in the zone- and how easily this game gets you in the zone?
Gosh I also dissagree so so much with the idea that the game being derivative would make it worse somehow? Honestly gonna need to see if you have social media presence / a kickstarter for this- since gosh its just so so so wonderful! Hmmm, though actually for selling it, it might need to do a little more to say "I made this cuz I love love love tohou and want more games like it!" to make sure folks dont see it as derivative it instead as a homage? Unsure how to best do so though...
Never looked into the bullet hell market, but gosh this is such such such a nice bullet hell- its a relatively easy market to develop for? So it might be oversaturated but gosh the art here is just so so wonderful, the music is so amazing and I'd love to see this as a game I could buy!!!
Wonderful wonderful little game -im very much procrastinating on big work things by leaving this comment- but just- HOW COULD I NOT- gosh I wish I wasnt busy and could just get lost in this little game
Wonderful work!!! Love girls, love games, and gosh this is so so nice
My mind immedately goes to "Okay well would this be a financial success and what can be done to get it that far" right now just because whoever made this deserves rewards and fans!!
Just find it such a shame I haven't heard about this silly little project before! But that's just me, thanks so much for the wonderful game (I'll be sure to play it plenty more when time frees yup) and I hope to see it finished (hopefully to a big audience like it deserves)!!!
Oh my goodness... I seem to have been buried under an avalanche of words, and all of them are very very very kind to me. I doubt I'll ever escape for the rest of my life... Well, sometimes these things just happen, I suppose.
Thank you for all of the positivity! Honestly, I'm sort of reeling from it... It's the kind of overwhelmed that you feel when you're tossed into a den of touch-starved kittens made out of rainbows and chocolate. I will try very hard to make the rest of the game also good.
To save you the time of looking for any, I don't have much of an internet presence quite yet, so the only way awareness of the project can spread right now is through word of mouth and whatever anomalous technology itch.io's content algorithm operates on. Maybe this is a strange opinion for a game developer in 2025 to have, but the internet kind of scares me. It feels like a big, beautiful ocean that could sweep you away if you aren't careful, so I'm tip-toeing into the shallow end one little baby step at a time. I'll probably have some manner of social media in the future, but in the meantime, I'm just happy to have my demo and my occasional very-lengthy comments be out in the water.
Thank you very much for loving girls. Remember: if you believe in girls with all your heart, maybe one day they will become real...
Great little shmup, had to shine a light on it, looking forward to seeing this one's final form
https://erikhoudini.com/#post?id=777131&title=houdini-magazine-arcade-update-8-n...
Music with roguelike.Awesom
Is there any chance we'd be able to download this?
I wanted to try playing it on my DSi pico-8 emulator
This game is rlly fun !!
Wow... I never knew a thing like that existed. That's extremely cool!
For the emulator, would it need an executable file, or the actual unexported .p8 files? Would it even work with a multicart like this? I'm not sure how I would feel necessarily about sharing the actual editable files of the game -- though I'm not certain how justified those worries are exactly, and I definitely plan to one day in the future.
Either way, I'm flattered that you would think my silly little demo is worth all the effort to emulate it... thank you very much!
Yeah, normal was pretty tough in the end. Very good game and very feature complete for a demo (ignoring the tease of a next level at the end). If anyone wants to see it in action, I did a quick commentated video here:
this was so fun to play even as someone who isn't good at bullet hells!!! the music is SO good too
This is so cool!