A MUSEUM PIECE · 2000–2002
Alien
Xenocide
The first game I was ever proud of. I built it in high school, from 2000 to 2002, and it helped make me a Sterling Scholar finalist. It ran on Windows for more than twenty years, until the day it wouldn’t install. So it lives here now.
Needs a keyboard. Turn your sound on.
I’d already made a few tiny games, including a Space Invaders clone. This one grew out of that clone, and the project file was still called Space Invaders when I stopped. The game opens that way too, with rows of white aliens and green bunkers, right up until a real ship shows up.
Stick around for the upgrades. The shops between levels sell Wave around level 3, Spread and Homing around level 5, then Pierce. They all combine, so every shot does all of it at once, and keys 7 through 0 switch each one on or off. If you only make it as far as Spread, I’ll be happy. That’s when it gets good.
Beat it and it starts over, with aliens four times as tough. Then four times tougher again. As far as I know, nobody has made it through more than three times.
There’s also the Nate Variable, named for my friend Nate Birth. Every so often a game starts with it switched on, and your ship stops listening to you. If you are Nate, press N on the title screen.
This is the original C++ with the original levels, art and sounds, compiled to run in a browser. The pause music is new, and it now starts in one-player mode.
Programming by Brad Grimm. Art by Blake Rieger, Mike Johnson and Brad Grimm. Music by Dave Peacock.