There’s a technique to beating level 6: Move far to the right and stay centered vertically. As an obstacle approaches, pull back (move left). That will give you enough time to move slightly up or down to avoid the obstacle. Return to center and back to the right as soon as possible.
I reach the boss at level 6 but then I died and I have not reached it no the next 2 minutes, so I quit…
It has very good powerups, but the green balls aren’t very useful and bullets shooted from nowhere are a little bit weird 
Very good game. This year will be hard to be top something ;D
Yeah i got it. ;D
And it just took me about an hour to finish all 7 Levels
Way to go Toasten! Thanks for playing. I hope you enjoyed it 
Very very well done. Genuinely enjoyable game. I love all the overdone aspects of it, the dramatic squareness intro, the huge powerup upgrades, the massive number of ships (especially that one giant grid room, loved that part). Boss battles are actually pretty unique, and there are really some challenging stuff that you can’t just rely on twitch shooting and dodging. You have to time yourself carefully and actually influence the enemies shots by your movements. Also clever how you made the entire game out of enemies, even the terrain =) interesting way to deal with the multiple enemies AND add turrets. Nicely done.
Thanks nva225. Sounds like you had a lot of fun.
Yeah, v.nice indeed. Got up to Level 6 and gave up… However just read Zeroones suggested level 6 technique so maybe another go… Good stuff…
Another great game.
Cas
Completely agree with all here that this is a fantastic game, but it also did somethign else for me. It made me remember what is actually going on in the shmup kind of games. Meaning, by not being distracted by all of the “candy” you see what is really happeneing (e.g. patterns, projectiles, movement, etc.) You know, that would actually make for some great teaching tutorials. Kind of a “Peel back the skin” sort of thing.
Awesome job and, I have to say, it is probably my fav. 4K entry ever
-Chris
This is a great game, incredible in its simplicity. The gameplay is unbelievable, so much that the graphics are irrelevant - and even then, the graphics are more than good enough.
My only suggestion - maybe the powerups past 5 might create a shield instead of the green ball (the ball looks really cool and all, but is useless 95% of the time). Each shield might absorb 1 shot or deflect one collision or something.
Definitely one of the top 5 games ever.
Edit: I finally finished it. Very good. However, I was killed right as I killed the last boss, but still got credit for beating the level and thus the game. Not sure if this is the way you want it to be.
[quote]I finally finished it. Very good.
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Nice. Thanks for playing.
[quote]However, I was killed right as I killed the last boss, but still got credit for beating the level and thus the game. Not sure if this is the way you want it to be.
[/quote]
When you destroy the final boss, you actually become invulnerable, game input is disabled and your ship is no longer painted to the screen. But, there may still be some green animated balls floating around you. So, you disappear, but you’re not dead In short, you won! Good job!
Cool. I thought I’d been killed because right at that moment my boss walked in and I had to minimize the game :o)
I’ll be checking out your source code to see if I can’t learn a few things. I’ve never written a side-scroller type game, so most of all I’m interested in how you store the levels and spawn information.
Again, great job, and good luck in the judging.
[quote]I thought I’d been killed because right at that moment my boss walked in and I had to minimize the game
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That’s hilarious 
[quote]I’m interested in how you store the levels and spawn information.
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Normally the levels in side-scrollers are represented with grid maps. I used such maps in my Pitfall entry. But, for Squarius I took a much simplier approach. There are 8 pieces that can be put together in different sequences to form a level. Pieces include a wave attack, a triplet attack, a wall with a hole in it, the explosive barrier, the shrinkers, the cave, a boss, etc. Each piece is affected by the level number (e.g. bosses become more difficult) and a random number generator (e.g. the hole in the wall will appear at different positions).
Essentially, when the stage begins, a clock is started. The sequence for each stage looks something like: at time T1, manifest wave attack, at time T2, manifest triplet attack, etc. Originally, this was encoded with 2 arrays of integers. But, to save bytes, it was ultimately encoded more compactly.