Saucers!
Saucers! is a Morphic application, coded in Smalltalk (Squeak).
Source code (open, MIT license):
Saucers 1.6, for Squeak 4.5
Saucers 1.81, for Squeak 5.1 & 5.2
The top download link provides all that is needed to play on a Windows system.
For other platforms, you will need the appropriate 32-bit virtual machine to run the 'Saucers!.image' file.
Instructions
Click on the top-left saucer to start the game.
The goal: survive the saucers waves.
You'll need a smooth and precise mouse, as dodging out of the way is a big part of the game.
The lateral move of the mouse allows your saucer to follow a specific trajectory, one out of two possible ones: hit SPACE to swap trajectories.
The upper right diagram displays both trajectories along with the saucer position.
The animated ring of arrows shows where your saucer would be in the alternate trajectory.
If you don't know where your saucer is (due to similar saucers coming to your help at times), hit V to have a green halo around it.
Shooting is automatic; two modes are available (swap with X), and also two fire rates (swap with S).
You can hold fire with Q.
For a temporary shield, hit C.
This only protects from lasers, not rockets nor space junk.
The protection is active as long as you can see the blue halo; it will cost you 5 blue energy units.
To blast away whatever is around your saucer, hit B.
This will cost you 100 red energy units; note that some villains are immune to blasting.
You can also target a specific foe with TAB, then hit A to shoot straight at it with a powerful laser.
Here again it will cost you 100 red units, whether you hit the target or not.
Three counters are displayed: green (life), blue (blue energy, for shield and trajectory swapping), red (red energie, for lasers and blast).
Whenever levels are low, a guy coming probably from Mars comes and provides supply in the form of colored cubes that you have to catch.
Note that you will not be able to catch a cube while being protected by a shield.
The final score is the time in seconds it took you to finish the game.
If you get destroyed, you can play again the last wave by hitting DELETE.
This will forbid you to enter the Hall of Fame, though; to finish the game properly, you must not die at all.
Do ESCAPE to exit the game.
U toggles on and off the CPU-intensive mode, which is nicer and smoother, with a moving background.
If you don't like the default keys, you can define your own bindings by hitting $.
This also lets you choose the mouse click action (shield by default).
Settings and scores are saved when the game is closed.
Credits
All images and most sounds have been collected on the web.
While I did not track where they all come from, I do believe they are free to use for non-commercial projects;
please complain if this is not the case and you feel offended by seing your work featured here.
Thanks to all the people who contributed to the art for this game.