CrankAttack

Crank the ship. Blast the demons. Earn rapid fire.

CrankAttack is a crank-powered arcade shooter built for Playdate. Demons warp in above you, weave, split, and rain bombs -- spin the crank to sweep your ship across the full width of the screen and pick them off one shot at a time. Every tenth wave a mothership descends: strip the eyes off one, or thread your lasers through a moving shield gap to crack the other. The waves loop forever, adding pods, aimed bombs and meaner escorts each time around. How deep can you get?

Features

• Crank-driven flying -- one full revolution sweeps the whole playfield, the way Playdate was meant to be played
• Demons that split -- from wave 3, shooting a big demon releases fast little divers; on spinner waves, four at once
• Earn rapid fire -- kill 3 divers in a row without missing and your single cannon becomes a four-shot autofire battery, until you die
• Two boss motherships -- an eye alien with eleven orbiting eyes and a demon city guarded by a rotating shield with one moving gap
• Endless escalation -- the 10-wave cycle loops with pods, aimed bombs, formation waves and an extra ship every third wave
• High score tracking -- your best run is saved between sessions
• Clean 1-bit aesthetic designed for Playdate's crisp black-and-white screen

Controls

• Crank: Move your ship
• D-pad Left/Right: Move (alternative)
• A or B button: Fire

Credits

CrankAttack is an original Playdate game inspired by Imagic's 1982 classic Demon Attack and by Paul Hammond's wonderful PICO-8 tribute Super Demon Attack. Go play both.

How to Install on Playdate 

Download the .pdx.zip file from this page
Go to play.date/account/sideload in your browser
Sign in with your Playdate account
Upload the .pdx.zip file
The game will appear on your Playdate!
Requires a Playdate console to play.