Cattle Crisis
How to Play
Cattle Crisis is an arcade shoot 'em up game (Shmup). Pilot your fighter jet to defeat evil aliens and save our precious cows! Cattle Crisis is a short game and currently features one level.
- Arrow keys - Move the jet
- X or M or V - Shoot
- Z or N or C - Hyper / Bomb
- You can also use a controller
System
As you shoot enemies or collect 🐄, your meter will fill. Once it passes the halfway point, you can activate Hyper Mode by pressing the Hyper button. While in Hyper Mode, the meter gradually depletes. Taking a hit will end Hyper Mode, but you won’t lose a life. Pressing the Hyper button again during Hyper Mode unleashes a devastating bomb, which consumes half of the remaining meter—if any is left.
Scoring
- Shooting enemies at close range increases your score (up to 4×) and causes more 🐄 to drop, allowing you to charge the meter faster.
- While in Hyper Mode, enemies drop ⭐ instead of 🐄, which grant extra points. The value of each ⭐ is shown in the top-right corner during Hyper Mode.
- Each enemy defeated in Hyper Mode increases the ⭐ value.
- Activating a bomb turns all nearby bullets into additional ⭐.
Video Series
Cattle Crisis was created as part of a tutorial series on how to make an Advanced Shmup from scratch. If you also want to make a game like this check out the Lazy Devs Academy YouTube Channel!
Credits
This game was written and designed by Krystian Majewski, an Independent Developer and the host of the Lazy Devs Academy video channel.
The music was composed by Sebastian Haßler, a music composer for film, TV and videogames.
The cover illustration was created by Mag Draws.
This project would have not been possible without the generous donations from my supporters on Ko-fi. Thank you!
Special thanks also to all of the playtesters including: Aktane, Boghog, Indra_S, MasterCoding101, LokiStriker, Barend, TheGacko, SquidLight, Buster Ermy, mg1399, BrainOnOxygen, SkullDragger, Blixten, middleclassjoe, Chaz, otto: A Mush Man and others.
Cattle Crisis was written entirely in Pico-8.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- Version 120 days ago
Comments
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Game is fun
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Wait your turn for success bro
I loved the music. Is there any where I can find in Spotify or youtube link public or should I open the game in background?
cool
I'm willing to pay much more than $5 for the game, if the controller support is exclusive to Xbox and PlayStation controllers, and is not generic.
There are a lot more controllers supported in this than just those two.
I bought the game, and it turns out that the controller plug-and-play support is generic, meaning that it will impose movement on "any kind of left stick" and firing on "any kind of Button 1", etc.
Why is that a bad thing? Isn't it better for all controllers to be supported instead of just xbox and ps ones specifically?
That's a very good question, and also a crucial one. But, interestingly enough, my answer is... no. And my reason is, generic controllers don't have the same button and stick definitions as an Xbox controller. If I start Cattle Crisis with a generic controller, I'm going to have to go through a trial-and-error process, to figure out which analog sticks, d-pads, and buttons have moves automatically imposed on them. This is a treacherous thing to do, because in some games, you have to also unlock moves. So, even if a move doesn't feel like it was successfully imposed, it may actually be so. If a move isn't imposed, I'll end up having to go into a profiler program (like JoyToKey) and having to manually add the move.
In the amount of time it took to play trial-and-error (followed by manual button entry) I could have just taken the game's keyboard defaults, plugged them all into JoyToKey, and started Cattle Crisis for the first time, without struggle. Being able to create your own controller layout is also one of the advantages that PCs have over consoles.
This year, I started an entire site (conflexgames.com) which is dedicated just to PC games that are guaranteed to cooperate with JoyToKey layouts, if you take a game's keyboard defaults, and plug them into that program. Finding a game's defaults is really easy - just scan the barcode with your phone. Conflex Games is okay with controller imposition, if it's specific to Xbox and PS controllers.
Thank you for the detailed explanation, but I still don't see how only supporting specifically xbox and PS controllers could be a better alternative. Wouldn't that force players with other types of controllers to download JoyToKey or AHK or other hacky solutions to play the game? How is that easier?
What about games that let you rebind controller keys via the options menu? Isn't that the best of both worlds? No 3-rd party software required.
:3
This is incredibly good! I like how it is hard, but quite forgiving.
your score systems are too good! there’s like 2 extra games hidden here under the surface. the scoring is deliciously spikey; my best is 1,605,710 but I think with some more practice I could get 2-2.5M. great game (and great tutorial too!)
This is an awesome shmup! Very fast and frantic, plays great! However, it pushes pico-8 to its limits and it kind of shows. The resolution is just too small and it's sometimes hard to discern what's going on, the ship is huge compared to the size of the play area, and it stutters when there's too many bullets on the screen. I find that pico-8 games are at their best when they play well with its limitations instead of struggling against them - like Mai Chan's Sweet Buns, Porklike or High Stakes (my personal favorite, even though I hate gambling). So maybe for a project like this it would be better to use something less limiting? I don't know, I'm thinking about watching the tutorial, but following along in something like Love2D or Monogame.
Maybe just pushing it towards picotron and making it sideways would be enough to overcome these issues.
Such a great game, and great tutorial. Massive amount of content for those into game development and Pico-8. Huge thanks for creating and sharing! Well done!
A fresh, addictive Pico-8 shoot 'em up with a genius scoring system.
Polished, creative, and full of heart — huge thanks to you Krystian, and your awesome tutorials! ヽ(〃＾-＾)/★*☆Congratulations～
I never made to the end of the cherrybomb tutorial, though it’s one of my most played pico8 games. I’ve been checking in on the advanced shmup series even though it’s way beyond me. Super excited to play this! It made me bust out that RGCUBEXX I bought but never used and it looks and feels amazing. Thanks for seeing this through, it’s incredible work!
1,025,830 B^)
cool game, was very happy to see controller support
Got my full clear no hit, about 892,000 and I don't feel like pushing that any further. Game seems alright, trying to micrododge on keyboard without a slow down button feels very twitchy and uncomfortable and I feel like a lot of healthier enemies have a smiiidge bit too much health otherwise it was a pleasant little experience.
just finished the basic shmup tutorial. i know what i have to do now! :)
Ooh, it's so addictive!
looking forward for a tic80 version! ;)
Congrats on the release!! The game looks amazing <3
I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's intense and super fun! No high scores to post, but I've survived over a minute. Visible hitbox seems to help.😅
Great music too!
This was a ton of fun! I also really appreciate the Advanced Shmup Tutorial, as well as your other PICO-8 tutorials!
An udder delight!
But seriously, soo good. 5 out of 5 milk churns.
you are a PICO hero !
Amazing! Very fast paced and absolutely love the visuals and music!
Itch page is charming as always.
Can't wait to check it the video series for the advanced shump, the increase in quality is superb!
This is the highscore I got:
Was not yet able to defeat the whole game in one go. Boss is proper hard :)