A new arcade game for the Commodore 64. Asteroids are falling on your cities. Shoot them down, and spend what you earn to keep the cities standing.
A digital download: a D64 disk image for a real 64 or an emulator, yours the moment you pay. All sales are final: see No refunds below. Want to try it first? The PC version is free to play right here in your browser.
The story
Nobody on Tessera thought much about the moon. It was small, it was grey, and it was full of iron, so the Company dug.
They dug for forty years. They dug until the night the moon cracked like an egg, and by morning there was a ring in the sky where it used to be. It was beautiful for about a week. Then the first piece came down.
The Company's ships were gone before the second. So were most of the people. What's left of Tessera is three cities on a grey plain: Command, with the last working dish on the planet; Skyline, where the towers are; and the Dome, where everything still green is kept. Between them they have a few anti-air guns, a workshop that will build anything for anyone who can pay, and one patrol ship that nobody got round to selling.
That's yours.
Nobody is coming, but the ring is. Every wave of it is thicker than the last, and behind each one is a piece big enough to have a name. Salvage pays by the fragment, the workshop takes cash, and the people in those three cities are counting on you to do the sums.
Keep them standing for as long as you can.
The game
Three cities sit on the ground at the bottom of the screen. Your ship slides along just above them and shoots at whatever is coming down.
Big rocks don't go quietly. A blue giant comes apart as three mediums, a large one splits in two, and every medium splits into two smalls. Only the smalls pay, so every rock you take on is a crowd to deal with.
Each wave sends more asteroids and faster ones. Comets and meteors join in. And every wave ends with a boss: one huge asteroid that heads straight for a city, soaks up hits and sheds chunks as you chip away at it.
The game ends when the last city falls.
Spend what you earn
Every small asteroid you destroy is worth $35. Spend it while the rocks keep coming:
- Repair a damaged city ($25 a hit). A city's color tells you how it's doing: green, yellow, then red.
- Arm a city with homing missiles ($75) that chase down whatever comes near it. Every city also has its own anti-air gun for the rocks that get low.
- Nukes ($1,000, up to three): launch one and it clears the sky.
- Upgrade your ship ($3,500 a level, three levels): twin wing guns, then triple guns, then a homing missile of its own. Get hit and you lose a level.
What's on the disk
- The whole game, written in assembly for the 64: splitting asteroids, comets, meteors, three cities with their missiles and guns, nukes, ship upgrades and a boss every wave.
- A pixel-art title page.
- Three original tunes on the SID (the title, the game, the boss) and twenty sound effects.
- A top 10 with your initials, saved to the disk.
- PAL and NTSC: the game checks which machine it's on and runs at the right speed on both.
What you need
A Commodore 64, PAL or NTSC, a joystick in port 2, and a way to load a D64: a Kung Fu Flash, SD2IEC, Ultimate or Pi1541, or a real 1541 if you write it to a floppy. Or the VICE emulator. No RAM expansion needed.
Load it with LOAD"*",8,1. In VICE, drag the D64 onto the window and it starts by itself.
How to play
Controls
- Joystick left and right (port 2): move
- Fire: shoot (hold it down)
- Joystick down: launch a nuke
- 1, 2, 3: choose a city, then R repairs it and M arms it with missiles
- N: buy a nuke
- U: upgrade the ship
- P or RUN/STOP: pause
On the title page or the top 10, press fire to start.
The screen
Across the top: your score, your money, your nukes (up to three) and the wave you're on. Messages appear on the line below: what you bought, what got hit, what's coming. When the boss is up, his health bar is there too.
Each city tells you how it's doing:
- Its color is its health: green is whole, yellow has taken a hit, red is one hit from gone. A city can take three hits. The fourth leaves a wreck, and a wreck can't be repaired.
- The bar under it is the ammunition left in its anti-air gun.
- A missile on a launcher at its left side means it's armed.
- The city you've chosen with 1, 2 or 3 has its bar lit. That's the one R and M work on.
The rocks
Rocks fall from the top of the screen. Any rock that reaches a city takes a hit off it, and pays you nothing. A rock that lands on open ground just explodes.
- Giants (blue) come apart as three mediums.
- Large rocks split into two mediums.
- Mediums split into two smalls.
- Smalls are the only ones that pay: $35 and 500 points each.
The bigger the rock, the more hits it takes, and every fifth wave all of them get tougher. So a giant is six smalls' worth of money ($210), if you can catch all six before they land.
- Comets are rocks with a tail, in ice white or flame orange, and they fall twice as fast. A small comet pays double.
- Meteors arrive from wave 6: small, bright and very fast. The cities' missiles ignore them, so they're yours or the guns'.
Your ship
Your ship can't be destroyed, and you have no lives to lose. But when a rock hits it, the ship is thrown back to the middle of the screen, your shots in the air are gone, and you lose one upgrade level. It blinks for a moment while it's safe from another hit.
A ship out of position is a city undefended, so don't park under a giant.
The cities' defenses
- Anti-air guns. Every city has one. It fires short bursts at rocks that get low and close. It holds a limited number of rounds; when it runs dry it's resupplied by itself for $30, if you have it.
- Homing missiles ($75). Choose a city and press M. From then on it launches a missile every couple of seconds at the nearest rock and chases it down.
- Repairs ($25 a hit). Choose a city and press R. Do it before the last hit, not after.
Nukes
Press N to buy one for $1,000. You can hold three. Pull the joystick down to launch: it flies to the middle of the sky and clears every rock on the screen, and you're paid for all of them as if you'd shot each one down to its last small. Against the boss, a nuke does the work of 75 shots.
Ship upgrades
Press U to upgrade for $3,500 a level:
- Twin wing guns
- Triple guns
- A homing missile of your own, fired while you hold the button
Remember that a hit on the ship costs you a level.
The boss
When a wave's rocks are all gone you'll see BOSS INCOMING! He comes in at the top, picks a city that's still standing, and heads for it. He starts with 100 hit points and gains 25 every wave. Every hit knocks a chunk off him, and his health bar goes from green to yellow to red.
Destroy him and you get $200 and 5,000 points, and the next wave starts. If he reaches his city, it's wrecked on the spot, whatever its health.
Waves
Every wave brings more rocks than the last, and they fall faster. Wave 1 is mostly large rocks. Giants and loose smalls join from wave 4, meteors from wave 6.
Game over and the top 10
The game ends when the last city falls. If your score makes the top 10, you enter three initials: joystick up and down to change the letter, fire to take it. The table is saved to the disk, so it's still there next time.
A few tips
- Arm your cities early. $75 for a missile launcher is the best money you'll spend.
- Shoot the big rocks high. The higher a giant breaks up, the longer you have to deal with what comes out of it.
- A repair is $25 and a city is forever. Don't save for a nuke with a red city on the board.
- Keep one nuke for the wave you can't handle. It pays for a good part of itself.
- Stay out from under what you're shooting. Losing your triple guns costs $3,500 to put right.
How buying works
- Pay through Stripe. No account needed. The price is $4.99; if you'd like to add a tip, just raise the amount before you pay.
- You come straight back here to your own download page, with the D64 on it.
- We email you the link to that page too, so you can get the disk again whenever you need it.
No refunds
All sales of Asteroid Base Defense are final. We do not give refunds. It's a digital product: as soon as you've paid, you can download the game, and a download can't be given back. That's why the PC version is free: play it first and see if it's your kind of game.
If something is wrong with your purchase itself (you were charged twice, or you paid and can't get your download), reply to your Stripe receipt and we'll put it right.
Play it free in your browser
Asteroid Base Defense was made this summer for the PC, and that version is free. Nothing to install: press play, then Space to start.
It's the same game with a few differences: four bases where the 64 has three, giants that split in two, and a keyboard where the 64 has a joystick.
- Move: the arrow keys left and right, or A and D
- Fire: Z or Ctrl
- Choose a base: 1–4, then R repairs it and M arms it with missiles
- Nukes: X buys one, arrow down launches it
- Upgrade the ship: arrow up
- Pause: P
The sound starts off (browsers insist on it): click AUDIO: MUTED under the game to turn it on. You need a keyboard to play, so it won't work on a phone.
Keep it coming
If you like what we're doing and want to see more of it, your support helps us keep making new things for our Commodores: games like this one and Hazelwood, demos, tunes and more.
Pay what you like, securely through Stripe. Thank you!