A Guide to My Game Made in Code.org: How to Play Solar Showdown

This is a game I made in code.org. I created this because I had some free time and decided to use it to make this game. It may be difficult for new players, but it is possible.

The year is 3042, and a new imposing force has entered the solar system. You sent out the army's mechanical sun to deal with the threat, but something went wrong, and we don't know what. The sun has turned its back on humanity, and is now heading back to Earth. You and your fleet go to investigate, but your fellow comrades were eliminated. It's now you, up against the mechanical monstrosity humanity invented to protect itself. Will you fall down to the might of the mechanical star, or will you prevail and kill the sun?

1. A computer with internet access
2. Access to the game (found here)
3. brain capacity greater than an apple (for understanding the mechanics)

This will describe the movement of the player and the attacks they can perform.

The basics of movement are the WASD keys, which allow the player to move up, left, down, and right respectively. If you go off the screen, you will return on the other side. This will be useful for an attack the sun will perform, noted later.

If you touch any of the sun's attacks, you will lose health. You can note your health by the green bar on the bottom of the screen, or by looking at the status of your ship (fine, dented, near broken). If the health bar turns completely red, your ship breaks and you lose.

Remote Guided Laser (RGL)

Now, you have your laser, your only form of attacking (as of now). It is a little green bar that follows your mouse, accelerating in the direction it is in. If you move your mouse right, the laser will go right. If you move your mouse up, the laser will go up.

Laser Teleportation

After a certain amount of time, a little white exclamation mark (!) will appear in the bottom left of the screen, as well as a bell playing. If you press F during this, the laser will move to the position of the mouse, as well as resetting its velocity. You can use this to set traps for the sun's path, or to just get some cheap damage. This has a long cooldown though, so use sparingly.

Emergency Stop

Another ability the player has is the ability to stop the ship whenever a little grey exclamation mark (!) appears in the bottom left corner, right next to the white mark. After the player presses R, the ship stops in place. This can be used whenever you get knocked around or are going too fast. Use it sparingly, as it does have a short cooldown.

Parry

Yet another ability presented to you is a parry button. When you press C, a white cloud appears around you. This may not seem special at first, but when you touch the ovals or fireballs, they get reflected, preventing you from damage or knock back. It also gives you style points (barely). and yes, it is a pizza tower reference

This part of the guide focuses on the boss's attacks and how they work.

The Fight

The boss itself has around 350 health points. Your laser takes away 5 of those every time you hit the sun. You have to hit the boss around 70 times to beat it.

Contact

If you touch the boss itself, you get knocked back and lose health. A large image also covers your screen, obscuring your view.

Attack 1: Ovals

This attack consists of 3 ovals that come down from the sun. If you touch one of them, you get knocked back and lose health. This attack is easy to avoid, but unpredictable because it randomly moves around. The best way to avoid this is to scout ahead for them.

Attack 2: very annoying fireball

This attack is a fireball that moves around the screen chaotically. If you touch it, you get flung back and lose more health. The best way to avoid this is to use your parry to deflect it and avoid it's knockback.

Attack 3: Audio Warning

This attack is the most devastating of them all. It is a giant laser that falls from the heavens, smiting thee down for thou crimes. For about 2 seconds, it warns the player that the attack is coming. After the two seconds is up, it fires, casting a heavenly blast straight from Olympus. Remember how I said it was devastating? Well, for every second you spend in it, you lose 2 health points. It happens for about a second and a half, and at 60 fps, that would equal 180 health points lost if you stay in it. And to make matters worse, there are 3 of them that can appear at any time, and two, even three of them can fire at the same time. Quick maneuvering and using the sides of the screen to move to the other are common strategies used to avoid this attack.

Second Phase

after you take away roughly 1/2 of the boss' health, a cutscene depicting the ship becoming angry, as well as the sun being in minor pain. The player is also restored to full health (useful for later), but the abilities are reset and unusable for the time being. Afterwards, the boss will enter an enraged state, in which it will turn red and gain new abilities, most notably

• Another fireball appears that only goes up and down
• 2 more ovals appear, slightly more orange that can also move up and down
• The boss can move upwards and downwards

The third attack is unchanged, but due to the new abilities gained by the sun, it's a lot more dangerous, so watch out for that.

To encourage replayability, I added a ranking system to the game, reminiscent of the ones from games like Ultrakill or Pizza Tower. The ranks go like this:

D rank: The worst rank, achieved by playing... not too well.

C rank: Better than D rank, still not good.

B rank: The average for any novice player dedicating time to this.

A rank: You can now play well, but it can still be better.

S rank: You're way better than average, possibly the best rank any normal person can get, but there's still one more...

P rank: This rank requires you to not get hit once for the entire game. Good luck getting this.

This "diverse" ranking system gives the player a chance to see how well they did and how they can improve. If you manage to get a P rank, please tell me, as I will be surprised and impressed.

Now how to get a good rank goes like this:

1. Learn the controls: getting familiar with your move set can lead you to avoiding most of the attacks. Speaking of which:
2. Learn the attack patterns: Figuring out when the boss does its attacks (except for the fireball) can tell you where to go at any given moment.
3. Parrying the attacks: using the parry button (C key) and timing it correctly with the ovals or fireballs can give you a style bonus. It's not a lot, only a tenth of one, but still use this to your advantage.

Because this game is rather difficult, I would like to propose a few strategies for beating it.

One thing you could do is set up the laser to stay next to the sun's pathway, which is in the top of the screen. Using this could mean that you could get a few hits off the sun before the laser falls back into chaos. But after the second phase hits, this strategy falls out of use (unless you have psychic abilities that can predict where the sun is going).

You could also go beyond the bottom of the screen and hover above the sun, taking hits off of it. The first attack wouldn't be able to hit you, but the 2nd and 3rd one still could. But like the last strategy, this falls out of use because the sun can move up and down.

When the sun enters its second phase, the entire screen is now its territory, as you may have heard before. When this happens, you want to put yourself into large open spaces and look ahead for potentially dangerous projectiles. The vertical fireball in the middle and now the sun itself are your new biggest threats, as they knock you around, potentially ping-ponging you off of other projectiles or into the laser.

These are just suggestions, but there isn't any reliable way to beat the game. As the saying goes:

Practice makes perfect

Conclusion

The game is easy to pick up, hard to master, like most things. What matters most about the game is that you enjoy it, have fun. You may use this guide for as long as it's reliable, as new mechanics may be introduced. Thank you for reading, and have a good one.