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Marvelous! Wonderful frantic gameplay! Sounds are better, but the pew pew is still a bit shrill. The two-note explosion sound you added is right out an Atari 2600 :D  The boss in Wave 3 that looks like a stealth bomber is very tricky to nail down, which is not a complaint. The asteroids seem to be immune to the gun and must be dodged?  

Suggestion: It would be cool if the B button fired high-rate automatic fire to deal with asteroids.  It could quickly overheat (suggest 1.5 seconds with a 4 second cool-off period) to discourage its use as a primary weapon. Being able to destroy asteroids in this retro-vector style would be nice and meta as the game asteroids was also vector. You could even shape them like in that old game so no one misses the reference.  Also the deep boom of those asteroids flying apart. 

Really cool game, man.

Love it...except three things.  

The visuals are perfect.  The challenge of it is spot on.  However.  Sound effects: The pew pew is terribly, annoyingly shrill.  Please lower the pitch.  Think Star Wars blasters.  Also there is no sound when a ship is destroyed.  A little discreet explosion noise would make an important satisfying difference to the overall game experience. 

Another major issue is that changes made to settings are not saved.  I have to invert controls and turn off sound effects (until they hopefully change) every time I open the game.   

Other than that, it's perfect. It's the space gunner game I've been wanting for months and months.

https://twitter.com/ParkerOrtolani/status/1520236987201908736?s=20&t=_fl9BPyVhvf...

Yes that would be a useful feature! Now I just need a watch band for my Playdate...

There might only be a handful of people you’ve heard from, but the truth is everyone who owns a Playdate is buying everything that shows up on itch for it because they all constantly want yet another fun thing to do new with that super cute device. It’s really addictive. Partially because they had to wait so long to get it that makes it a big deal and partially because the crank is getting used in genius ways. So there are whole games that never would have thought up were it not for the novelty of that. As the movie said: “I you build it, they will come.” If you reconsider, as I said I will provide video of each successive build running on the hardware. This could even be done over Facetime so you could tell me in real-time to try this or that to check specifics. A lot of developers have built great games this way especially at first when the device was scarce. 

I get that you have other things going, but it would be worth your time. What I get out of it is helping a cool projects land on my favorite toy. So mull it over. You can get back to me in a month or six or whenever you’re ready if you decide to tackle it in Lua. 

Best, Joe

Hi! Just a quick note to say I've kept an eye on this project to see if you're moving forward with the Playdate version and there's been months of radio silence. I hope the delay is simply because you're still waiting to get a Playdate so you can ensure sure it's ready for prime time.  If that's the holdup I would be happy to put what you have so far on my Playdate and put it through it's paces on video for you so that you can see how it behaves and learn what issues still need to be addressed, if any.  I'm a huge fan of fidget toys both physical and digital (download UZU for iOS if you'd like having your mind blown by a truly great one). And when QUO is released for Playdate I would gladly pay a fair price for it, as would many others. Sideloadables are the rage in the Playdate community right now because the user base has grown significantly now that Panic has been shipping them as fast as they can make them for most of the year (since April).  You would definitely make $$$.

Just noticed your comment today about Tiger Tateishi.  Fascinating artist.  Did you notice that he bears a strong resemblance to Bruce Lee. Hmm...

And I now get your "Would You Please Provide Attribution Podcast" quip.

!!!!!!!

 (the happiness center in my brain just imploded)

And after that request I sideloaded it and found that you had already thought of using the crank for a drum roll.

Crank to drum roll? :D

And there was much rejoicing!

So after playing this daily, there is one thing on my wishlist: Could the menu screen display the score of the last game played? (last score and high score could go together perhaps).  There is not time to see your score when it's Game Over, and I'm always left wondering how close I came to my high every time. 

Adding this small but important feature would also give you an opportunity to rename the binaries to 1-Bit Pac Man and Zen 1-Bit Pac Man  :)

Yayy!!! Go toasters!! This makes my day (and I’ve already had an unusually good day)!!!

I’m glad you’re recovering, I know what you just went through. I caught a rough case of it in August and very nearly required hospitalization. Suffering covid is no joke.   

This is 5 bucks well spent.  I play this on a daily basis.  You wouldn't think to look at it but (like everything) it's even better in headphones because of its dulcet tones.  I look forward to sideloading your next well-polished creation.

I stayed up way too late tonight hunting and hunting for this.  I remember it becasue I had it, and the internet is omniscient so the info *must* exist.  My Red Bull fueled persistence paid off.  After three hours of hunting, the word "prototoasters" popped to mind.  That's what that 1-Bit toasters saver was called.  Armed with that keyword I soon found an interview with After Dark creator Jack Eastman where he says Prototoasters was a module in After Dark 4.0 based on his original prototype artwork.  Interview is here.

Then I found another page with images of both the prototoasters and the final, more familiar ones.  Both in 1-Bit. Hopefully you can either chase down an old copy of After Dark 4 or use the 1-Bit images to create sprites.  The images show the wings in both the up and down positions.

The prototoasters (and flying toast) in the 1-Bit image look exactly like the Prototoaster screensaver (except in After Dark they were DOS green in keeping with Berkeley Systems' motto "Agressively Stupid."  :)

EDIT: After writing this I noticed that my second link is to ⌘GET INFO, the web site of gingerbeardman, who's developed several Playdate games (Daily Driver, Bender, Sparrow Solitaire, Circular, among others).  He wrote at length about Tomoya Ikeda, the artist who created the 1-bit toaster artwork based onEastman's prototyping.  So it stands to reason gingerbeardman would be on board with making the toasters fly on the Playdate via Stars of the Screen.  Perhaps he could be of assistance.  

"You're the loader!"

There's a 1-bit verion out there.  I used to have it (maybe still so if I search for it).  It was simple green flying toasters against black - a joke as if the saver existed before the Mac and this was the DOS version.  I'll hunt for it if it would help.

I really really really hope this has Flying Toasters.  Please God!

So now, two weeks later, I've come to realize that what I thought was crazy fast is actually just the proper speed of Pac Man.  I had been lulled from playing the original slow release a lot.  That slow version is still cool.  You should drop the word "fast" and rename the final version simply One Bit Pac Man and also keep the slow one available but call it Zen Mode. ;)

Holy crapcakes is the final version fast! I was so used to lolygagging around the maze in a previous version called "fast." Now the game moves in a much bigger hurry than even the old arcade version.  I'm missing turns and I've no think-time to plot against the ghosts. I love it! It's the most frantic version of Pac Mac ever!  

I didn’t mean to take credit for the idea. Pong clocks have been around for a long time. There was even a pong clock Dashboard widget in MacOS years and years ago (remember Dashboard?) I’m rooting for you to do it because I can totally see it on Panic’s little television-looking speaker/charger dock when that comes out. That would be a really fun desk distraction. Please go for it! I would pony up money for a pong game with that function. 

That would be great!  Just imagine the TV-looking Playdate dock playing constant pong against itself to tell you the time.  I would pay money for that. 

This is wonderful! Majong would seem impossible to pull off on such a limited screen, but this really takes advantage of that screen's strengths and pulls it off with aplomb. Glad I bought it.

Actaully I just realized that was two feature requests.  Not really a math guy.  Sorry.

I suggest that you add a clock mode.  A mode where the cpu plays against itself in such a way that the score always displays the current time.  This would make it a fun alternative clock to display when Panic releases the dock/speaker.  The font size of the score should be much larger (at least for clock mode).

Love it!  One feature request: Currently both the A and B buttons and the D-Pad all do the same thing (play the current note).  Would it be possible to make the right D-Pad jump to (and play) one octave lower, and left D-pad jump to and play one octave higher.  And, since I realize this is not meant to be a serious musical instrument, have the B button make the french horn suddenly retract to the start position - like letting go of a tape measure and SMACK! The guy in the tux gets rocked back a little.

This looks cool. I hope you release a .pdx so I can sideload it.  Well done.