How to Play

Cherry Bomb is a basic arcade Shoot 'em up  game (Shmup) reminiscent of Space Invaders or Galaga. Pilot your red spaceship to blast your way through 9 waves of attacking aliens. Use the following controls:

  • Arrow keys - Move the ship
  • X or M or V - Shoot
  • Z or N or C - Bomb (Depletes your 🍒. See below)
  • You can also use a controller

Shoot the enemies to destroy them. Enemies will attack you. Destroy or avoid all enemies in a wave to proceed to the next wave. There are 9 waves in the game. If you get hit you will lose a ❤️. If you lose all ❤️ you lose the game.


Pickups

Occasionally, defeated enemies will drop a 🍒 pickup. Collect them to increase the strength of your Bomb. Triggering the Bomb will deplete your 🍒. You cannot use the Bomb if you have no 🍒. 

If you collect 10 🍒 you will restore a ❤️. If you already have 4❤️ you will get points instead. After collecting 10 🍒 your stock will always reset.


Scoring

Here are ways to score in the game:

  • Shooting down enemies will give you points. More dangerous enemies will give more points
  • Shooting down an attacking enemy will double the points you get
  • Collecting 10🍒 with 4❤️ will give you points
  • Destroying enemy bullets with the Bomb will give you points

The game will keep your highest score even if you close the browser. Post your best results in the comments below!


Learn How to Make This Game!

Cherry Bomb was created as part of a tutorial series about how to make your own game 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.

Cherry Bomb game was written entirely in Pico-8.

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux, HTML5
Rating
Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars
(28 total ratings)
AuthorKrystman
GenreShooter
Made withPICO-8
Tags2D, Arcade, PICO-8, Retro, Shoot 'Em Up, Short, Space, stg, Top down shooter

Purchase

Buy Now$3.50 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $3.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:

cherrybomb_windows.zip 961 kB
cherrybomb_osx.zip 3 MB
cherrybomb_linux.zip
cherrybomb_raspi.zip 2 MB

Development log

Comments

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Best Tutorial series ever!! learned a ton, thank you!!

Nice, good game. My score when I beat the boss was 58600. Can Pico-8 develop games for other game platforms and maybe even consoles or can one only publish a game made in Pico-8 on itch io ? 

You can play Pico-8 games on Windows, Linus and Mac OS. There are also some Raspberry handhelds that play them very well

69600 first try holy cow that was amazing

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Great game and an excellent tutorial series on Youtube. Finished the game on my 8th try with a high score of 52100. 

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Fun little game, I like that enemies that drop and attack score more points. 68300 on my first clear.

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I had only 75 cents, but I put three quarters into the Cherry Bomb machine!

Thanks for doing this. It's a well designed game and the tutorial is nearly perfect. This 59 year old architect has been hoping for something like this since he was 16.

Well done.

Turned out great! And the itch io page is so classy! :D

thanks for a great tutorial=)

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very neat, i got 66800,  Thanks for making this! I sort of wish there was an endless mode hahaha

Thank you for beeing someone getting new people to this lovely game engine :D

Great game! The tutorial series is awesome as well! Thanks Krystian!

I'm working in my own shmup based on the tutorial and it will be an entry to the show case game jam.

Love it! The game is super fun and super juicy!

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I absolutely love this game, and I love your approach to programming. You are a big part of the Pico-8 community and you obviously put a lot of time and care into the games and video tutorials you create. Please keep up the excellent work!

Fun + nostalgic-style game, it gets the adrenaline going, and I like how it's short enough to re(play) in a quick sitting.  Thank you for creating the whole PICO-8 tutorial for it (I've only watched a few episodes so far).