Starshifter Cycles

In this simple fast paced top down shooter take control of 1 of 3 types of space ships, a blast ship that fires two quick long range shots, a burst ship which slowly fires high damage but short range shotgun like bursts of missiles, or finally the ram ship which can quickly and effortlessly tear through enemy ships with a melee dash. 

But beware enemy ships with all of the same abilities are coming at you from every side and angle! Destroy as many enemies as possible before they destroy you. 

But once your ship is destroyed it isn’t over! No whenever an enemy destroys you, you’ll shift into their ship, gaining each of their abilities and weaknesses along with a second chance!

Playable with Mouse/Keyboard, Xbox One, and Dualshock 4 controllers, other controllers may also work but have not been tested. Left-Stick/WASD to move, Right-Stick/mouse to aim, Left-trigger/Left-Click to shoot, Start(Xbox)/Options(DS4)/Esc to pause or unpause, A(Xbox)/X(DS4)/Left-click to confirm menu option.

Original version of the game was made over the course of a weekend in January 2025 using the Ubisoft Toronto Next Programming Challenge API and several custom engine features made over the course of the 2 months preceding. 

Some of those custom engine features include an Entity Component System, a Simple Physics Engine, A Scene System with Additive Scene loading, and more.

The version released and available here is modified, using the same custom engine components mentioned above, but replacing all of the API code provided by Ubisoft with my own code built on top of SFML 3.0. Additionally a small number of additional features were added to this build not in the original game jam one (player health bar, DualShock 4 controller support, mouse and keyboard support, pause menu).

All code, both game and engine written in C++.

Some free public domain (CC0) assets were used including several sprites from the shape shooter extension by Kenney Vleugels (Kenney.nl), and the swoosh sound effect used by the dash ship retrived from freesound.org and uploaded by lesaucisson.