Welcome to my new event, the PEW PEW PEW Trains❗

[For updates to the game, please see my first post below the thread description! If you want any of these features, you need to download the latest version and install it over the top of your current version!]

Hi, everyone! I've sent out all of the keys for wins where the player code was valid! I have also tried to reach out to each person individually that did not have a valid code to explain what's wrong (e.g., the player never added their player name and code at all, the code is the default one for "player" [this happened a lot], etc.) and to please fix it ASAP. When you update your invalid code with the correct one, please send me a SG message or IM me on Steam, and I'll check it and get your key sent out as soon as I can (I'm going to be in a training class the next couple of days, so will only be online in the evenings).

If there is an issue with a key, please agree to delete the GA, and I will find an alternate prize for you!

Congrats to all of the winners!

This event is all about action games! All of the games in the GAs for this event include one of three things:

1. Guns!
2. Lazzzzers!
3. EXPLOSIONS 💣💥
   Or, preferably, ALL THREE!

When I thought about how I wanted to do an action-game-based set of trains, I thought, "why not make it so participants have to actually play an action game and get a decent score to enter the trains?" Yeah! But where was I to get a game that would let me insert links to trains in it? Well, I looked and looked, but couldn't find anything that would work. So, there was only one answer: I'd have to make one.

That's right, people, I MADE YOU A FREAKING VIDEO GAME!

I think that this is the first time we've done this on SG, but I could be wrong. Either way, I wanted to do something new and different for this event.

[For the mods: yes, people are going to have to download something that I made. No, I do not make money from this in any way, it includes no advertising nor any type of promotion, and I do not intend to sell it in the future. In other words, there is no personal gain of any type for me in this. I developed this strictly for a SteamGifts event to give to the community. Just wanted y'all to know that I always try to follow the rules. 😁😎👍🏻]

Please read everything that follows! I know that it's a lot, but it's all important (plus, I took the time to write it 😏).

So what is this game?

The game is called 1954, and it is an endless, RNG-based shooter that heavily rips off was inspired by the classic 80s video game, 1945. It started out as me doing a tutorial for a very, very crappy version of that game, and I thought, "man, I can work on this and make it way better than this garbage," so I did. I found a guy who created a sprite sheet that replicates the graphics from 1945 almost to the pixel, and he was offering it as full public domain for use in anyone else's project. As I'm not any kind of real artist, I grabbed it, thanked him, and used it as my inspiration to create this game. All sound effects were either from packs I own or came from Freesound.org (I will be adding credits to the end of this thread later).

Hey, that's super. How does the event work? The trains, man, the trains!

Ok, there are two trains in this event. The first one contains 82 carts and the second one contains 83 carts, for a total of 165 GAs. They're running from today until mid-day (CT US) on February 10th. To enter the trains, you must play the 1954 video game and achieve a good enough score to expose the 5-character code that you can type into the URL of the first invite-only GA of each train (if you don't know how to do this, I or many others around SG can help you understand how to make it work).

First things first: you need to download the (very small) installer for the game from HERE.

Then, play the game. Be sure to change your player name to your SteamGifts name! You need to score at least 10,000 points to get the code for the first train. You need to score 25,000 points to get the code for the second train. As you would expect, the games in the second train are of higher average quality or are more rare/unique/etc. The second train also includes a couple of non-bundled GAs at the end.

You will see the train codes on the Game Over screen after you game ends if your high score is qualifying (meaning that if you are trying to get a higher score and don't do well on another game, you'll still see any codes that you qualified for from previous games). They will be clearly labeled Train 1 and Train 2. You can use these codes to enter the trains by replacing the ????? in this URL: "steamgifts.com/giveaway/?????/"

Also, don't try to hack the saved high score. It's encrypted. You'll likely fail. Just play the game, Cheaty McCheaterpants. 😜

So what's to keep people from just giving the codes to their friends so that they can cheat and not even play the game?

Hey, I'm glad you asked! So, the other thing you'll need to pay attention to is the winner code that follows your name on the Game Over screen. When your game is over, in the middle of the screen, you'll see your score, the high score, your player name, and finally your winner code under that (see attached graphic at the bottom with this and the train codes highlighted in green boxes). This is why it's important to enter your SteamGifts id as your player name. The code that is generated is completely unique to your player name and is generated using a terrifying algorithm that I created. If you're a cryptologist, you might be able to break it in a few hours, but it would be a lot easier just to play the game.

So, when you're ready to enter the trains, go right ahead. But, the other thing you need to do is update this Google Sheet with your player name (SteamGifts id) and the generated code. I will be checking all winners by running their SG name through my algorithm, and if it doesn't match, I'll be contacting you to prove to me that you played (in case you just made a typo or your arch enemy changed your entry or something). But anyone caught cheating will have their GA re-rolled and they'll go straight on my blacklist for life, so please just play the game that I took the time to make for you, ok?

RECAP:

1. Download and install the game
2. Run the game and be sure to enter your SteamGifts name as the player name
3. Score at least 10,000 to enter train 1 and/or 25,000 to enter train 2
4. Take note of your winner code and add it to the Google Sheet

More about the game

The basic instructions are included in the game (just click on the question mark on the menu screen), but I also want go over some things here as well as provide some more semi-spoiler-level stuff for those who are curious about where/how the difficulty ramp-up works.

Controls are simple: you move your plane with either the WASD or arrow keys. You shoot with the space bar (you can just hold it down) or the Enter key. Press the pause key or the P key to pause the game. No, I didn't make reassignable keys (it's actually a big pain in GameMaker Studio...you should see the code that I had to write just to allow you to enter your player name and save it), but at I did try to include two sets to support both righties and lefties. 😎

You can turn the music on/off by simply clicking on the musical note on the menu screen.

You can resize the game window, and the game should scale appropriately. You can also switch to full-screen (and back) by using alt-Enter. For ultra-wide-screen gamers like me, it should letterbox things appropriately in full screen.

Shoot everything that moves. At first the game starts very slowly, but believe me, it will eventually get close to a bullet-hell game. Be vigilant about picking up power-ups...they are your key to survival when the difficulty ramps up. At very high scores, power-ups will be very frequent and practically litter the screen. Grab everything that you can...they're worth points, plus caching as much of the spread-shot power-ups as possible is key to carving through a screen full of enemies.

I've tested the install on multiple PCs, and everything seems to run ok even on a fairly-potato computer. Oh, and sorry, you need to be running Windows to play the game. No linux distro (I'd love to, but no time for the extra build and testing). No Mac (shouldn't you be running Parallels, anyway? 😜).

Notes and tactics

• Enemy bullets remove 10% of your health.
• Colliding with an enemy plane is instant death (so if you have to choose between a plane and a bullet, clearly choose the bullet).
• When you lose a life, your gun speed powerup will be reduced by one, and you will lose your diagonal shot
• Your bullets can collide with your enemies’ bullets in midair! This is a key tactic to surviving in the game.
• The most important tactic is to upgrade your guns and use them for defense as well as offense.
• The second most important tactic is to load up on every spread shot powerup you can grab.
• No bonuses will spawn before 500 points
• Bonuses will come more quickly as you progress through the game…at very high scores, they will drop rapidly. You’ll need them to survive, so grab everything you can without colliding with enemies.
• The first gun speed powerup only spawns after 1K
• The second gun speed powerup and diagonal shot powerup only spawn after 2K
• You can have a maximum of 5 lives from collecting powerups
• Grabbing a spread shot powerup gives you 5 rounds of shots at 1 shot per second
• There is no limit to how many spread shot power ups you can collect, e.g., if you grab 4 powerups, you’ll have 20 seconds/rounds of spread shots
• Enemy shooting speed increases as your score increases
• Enemies arrive more quickly as your score increases
• Bombers arrive every 2K-2.5K
• Kamikaze Storms arrive every 2.5K-3K
• Formations arrive every 1K-2K starting at 500-800
• Jets arrive every 1K-1.5K starting at 3K-3.5K
• Bombers get tougher to kill throughout the game, with a maximum HP of 200
• Bombers will travel along one of three various flight paths
• Bombers have three different shot patterns: burst, spiral, and volley. Learn them and use your guns to protect against them
• Under 3K, enemy formations are always comprised of Fighters
• From 3K-8K, enemy formations can be Fighters or Heavy Fighters
• At 8K, enemy formations are always Heavy Fighters
• At 4K, Fighters and Heavy Fighters increase in speed
• At 5K, the Jets increase their fire rate
• At 5K, sometimes the Kamikazes will attack from the side
• At 6K, some of the Spewers will slide sideways
• At 12K, the center (or 2 leads in double-V) plane in a formation will be a Spewer
• At 15K, the Jets get 50% more HP
• At 25K, small enemies other than the Kamikaze gain an extra HP
• At 30K, the Jets arrive in pairs

Important note: lior9905 has added 29 new carts to the end of the first PEW PEW PEW train! If you haven't already found them, go back and enter some more GAs!

If I missed anything or anyone has any further questions, ask away.

Ok, I think that covers everything! So play the game, which I hope is fun for you, and best of luck with all of the PEW PEW PEW GAs!!!

View attached image.