Higher-Order Fun

Game Design & Game Programming

SPJam 2011 – Down Goes the Phoenix

Last weekend, I was in São Paulo with my friends at Studio Miniboss to join the first edition of SPJam. The event was lots of fun and a success, with almost a hundred entrants and over 20 digital or board games. Our entry, made in the 48 hours of the event, is “Down Goes the Phoenix”:

It’s a horizontal scrolling shoot ’em up on which you play with a Phoenix. As the game progresses, your phoenix grows older as the bar on the bottom fills. Shooting or getting hit lowers the bar. When the bar is full, you’re a mature phoenix and you can reincarnate – doing so resets your power-ups, but increases your score multiplier and kills all enemies, as well as removing the fog that slowly descends upon the screen, obstructing your view. As an arcade game, the objective is to obtain a high score, and knowing the right time to reincarnate is a critical point.

The game is written in C++11 in my own engine. I was the programmer and Amora, Santo, bitmOO and Marina Val were the visual artists. The music was composed by Rafa Miranda, and we had some game design help in the first day from Iko. Thanks to everyone involved!

The SPJam version of the game can be downloaded here: http://higherorderfun.com/stuff/DownGoesThePhoenix.zip (Win32 binary). This is the exact version made in those 48 hours, save for minor bug fixes.

11 ResponsesLeave one →

  1. Nice game, good work!

  2. I have played this game, And now I’m more interested in the development so I want to learn how you make this and how much time it takes for completion? I have little C++ and also HTML languages experience but not any visual art so What should I do alone, If I want to make a game like this?

  3. interested game i like it
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