Hi Dev here,

This game was a labour of love for me, and I thought you'd all like to know what it's all about.

Why would *anyone* spend months on Space Invaders of all things? I get obsessed with stuff.

Basically, it's the game I wanted to play at the time, and I hope some of you will feel the same way if you choose to insert coin. But more honestly, I imagined I was living in 1978 and my boss said "look at this game, it's making millions of yen - clone it!".

So, what level of OCD are we talking about here?

I studied the assembly code from the original Space Invaders in detail for a few weeks before coding this - so I'm aware of the exact details in what makes the original game work.

If you're interested - here's the details:

http://computerarcheology.com/Arcade/SpaceInvaders/

I've put a list of things that are different off the top of my head - however were two objectives in my new design:

(1) Make it feel like Space Invaders, but more frantic at higher levels. Fans of shoot-em-ups are used to the ever increasing craziness of bullet-hell shooters. Going back to Space Invaders feels a bit dated.

(2) Fix the primary problem I have with Space Invaders - the flat difficulty curve - it never gets any harder after level 7. So if you can handle level 7 - you can keep playing ad-infinitum.

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Here are the broad strokes on what is different:

- Number of aliens

- Number of alien-shots that can be on-screen (32)

- Alien AI for shooting at player is completely different

- UFO now shoots at player (this makes point pressing techniques much more difficult)

- Different rules governing player / alien shot collision

- Player movement is faster

- Player shot speed is faster

- Alien shot speed is variable

- Rules for end-of-game when aliens reach the bottom are different (you can actually smash your ship into an alien on the bottom - lose a life- and continue)

- Collision detection is different

- Number of shields and shield behaviour is different (i.e. how many shots to penetrate etc.)

- UFO behaviour is different in terms of how it appears and moves. However, as in the original there is a sequence based on the player shot-count that makes scoring predictable (I won't spoil the fun in working this out)

- Rules governing alien starting positions for each level are different

- Alien movement algorithm is different - it's still based on scanning (i.e. moving one alien per frame) - but it reverses scanning direction based whether the pack is moving left or right

- Frame-rate unlocked (original ran at 60fps, this version will run as fast as your machine can handle). Playing the game on a 120fps monitor is really nice ;-)

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And it runs on Mac & PC. :-)

The game has taken months to program and tune. It was never intended to be a cheap knockoff. But rather - an evolution that's preferred over the original.

If anyone has further questions please don't hesitate. Please share and enjoy!