At first I was going to go for a Breakout or Arkanoid game with an extra game mechanic, but when I was replaying them, I realized that I did not like them as much as I thought I did. So I switched over to Space Invaders, which was a game I spent many hours playing when I was younger. Well, my first experience was playing TI Invaders, which is still a game I fondly remember. One difference between the two, was that in TI Invaders, the enemies would change where as in Space Invaders it would be the same aliens every level. But I'm not redoing that one, and I'm only doing one level anyway.
So then the idea about what game mechanic to add to Space Invaders. So thinking back when I was first playing the games, I had wanted to be able to aim the tank's cannon instead of only shooting straight up. So I went with that. Facing the original aliens like that though, would not have been too easy, so the aliens would have to change as well. So I gave them more than one hit, some of them can aim their shots, some have shields, and some are invincible for a time.
With that decided, I went in and started creating the assets,then started developing one thing at a time. Didn't take too long this time, partly because the game is relatively simple and partly because I am getting better. The buildings were probably the most complicated tasks, I wanted them to be destroyed a bit like in the original where only a little gets destroyed at a time. So I made them individual parts and spawned them in some loops. Maybe not the best way, but it worked out nicely.
I decided to throw in some power ups as well. I think they made the game more fun, gives the player the occasional choice to make between risking death or getting a useful upgrade. After completing all the tasks, it took a little while to balance the game down to something not so difficult. I tried out a few different strategies to make sure they would work.
And that is the end of this project. I'm thinking that the next one might be Robotron 2084 with some kind of added mechanic yet to be decided on.
Assets: InvadeAssets.zip
Game (Windows): GameL2S1Invade.zip
Amazing work !! I really like the look of your game.