Space Lancer

An R-Type-style horizontal shoot-'em-up with original art, and music: 8 stages with mid-bosses and bosses, nine kinds of enemy, four types of detachable pod, six kinds of power-up capsule, per-stage music and colours, an attract-mode demo, pause, three difficulty levels, and saved high scores.

Controls

Key	Action
Q / A / O / P (or Kempston joystick)	Move
Space (or joystick fire)	Tap = shot. Hold and release = charged piercing beam
M (or N, or joystick fire 2)	Launch the Force pod / call it back
ENTER (or H)	Pause / resume
O / P (or joystick left / right) on the title screen	Choose the difficulty

Difficulty

On the title screen press left / right (O / P or the joystick) to choose EASY, NORMAL or HARD. The shown best score changes with it, and your last choice is remembered.

	Easy	Normal	Hard
Lives	5	3	2
Enemy bullet speed	5 slower	as designed	4 faster
Enemy / boss health	25% less	as designed	25% more
Wave sizes	25% smaller	as designed	25% bigger
Gaps between enemies in a wave	25% longer	as designed	20% shorter
Free shield at the start of each stage	yes	no	no

Each difficulty has its own high score, so an Easy score never beats a Hard one. 

Attract mode (demo)

Leave the title screen alone for about 10 seconds and a demo plays by itself: a computer pilot flies an invincible ship through 30 seconds of a stage, steering round the rock, dodging bullets, shooting and using its pod. Each demo shows a different pod and stage. Press any key (or move the joystick) to stop it and return to the title screen. Demos never touch your score or the high score. 

Gameplay

• Pods. You start with the orange Force pod on your nose; it blocks enemy bullets and damages enemies it touches.
  • Press M (or joystick fire 2) to launch it, and again to call it back. It re-attaches on whichever side of the ship it is on, so fly past a launched pod and it snaps onto your tail, where it fires backwards whenever you shoot.
  • Collect a P capsule to swap to the next pod type (orange > blue > red > green > orange). Dying puts the orange pod back. The letter of the fitted pod is shown at the bottom right.

    Pod	Attached to the ship	Launched
    O orange	blocks bullets	flies out and fires like your ship
    B blue (wave)	your shots pierce through enemies	flies out, fires piercing waves (slower)
    R red (seeker)	each shot also fires a homing missile	flies out, fires pairs of homing missiles
    G green (orbit)	each shot also fires up and down	circles the ship, firing, and blocks bullets as it goes

• Power-ups drop from blue carrier ships and from mid-bosses (six kinds; the sixth is P, above):
  • W weapon: 1 shot, then 2 parallel, then 3-way spread
  • S speed: up to two speed-ups
  • H shield: absorbs one hit (not rock)
  • M homing missiles: one, then two (up and down), seek the nearest enemy
  • G ground shot: falls to the floor and crawls along the terrain
  • P next pod type (see Pods)
  • Dying loses all power-ups. Collecting a maxed one gives bonus points.
  • The bottom-right of the screen shows your levels: W1 S0 M0 G0, and H when you have a shield.
• Enemies
  • saucer (weaves in a sine wave), diver (zig-zags and shoots)
  • carrier (drops power-ups), turret (sits on the rock, shoots aimed shots)
  • chaser (fast, homes in on you)
  • sniper: parks on the right and fires aimed pairs, then leaves after about 7 seconds
  • dart: flies a straight line at where your ship was a moment ago; keep moving
  • bomber: crosses the top of the screen dropping falling bombs
  • crawler: walks along the floor or ceiling (over bumps), shooting at you; rock does not hurt it
  • mid-boss in every stage: a gunship that sweeps and fires fans. It drops two capsules when destroyed, and flies away if you ignore it.
• Rock walls scroll in from the right and always kill you. Enemies explode on them (turrets, crawlers and bosses are immune); shots and enemy bullets stop on them (ground shots follow them).
• 8 stages, each with its own waves, terrain, colours, music, faster enemy bullets and a different boss (they flash white when hit):
  1. Aimed three-shot
  2. Swaying boss with a 5-way fan
  3. Bullet rings, spawns chasers
  4. Follows your ship (new enemies start to appear)
  5. Gets angrier below half health
  6. Fast sweeping diamond: volleys, rings and pairs of darts
  7. Hexagon summoner: fans and rings, calls bombers and chasers
  8. Final boss (cross): three phases, each faster and with more summons
• Lives depend on the difficulty (see above). The three high scores and your difficulty choice are saved to spacelancer.hi (in the folder the game was started from) when a game ends. Files from older versions still load.

Created with Claude AI.