This is a fork of Tempest 2021, aiming to parody the Polybius urban legend (which claimed the infamous Polybius game played similarly to Tempest) and also add new features beyond what were found in Tempest 2021.
Tempest 2021 is a remake of Tempest, an arcade game from 1981 published by Atari. The remake has been created as a university project at a University of Silesia (Uniwersytet Śląski).
That original project was created in cooperation with Piotr Kłosek.
You can play Polybius, just click here.
Use A and D to move around, press Space to fire. There is one-time super-weapon called Superzapper - you can use it with F. You can jump with W. Q and E will dash three-lanes quickly. Arrow keys and game controllers can also be used.
On a controller, L1/R1 will dash and L2/R2 will lock you to a lane.
The game remembers your progress, unlocking levels you can re-start at later. High-scores are also stored in browser local-storage. A global server-based leaderboard will be implemented in the future.
The project is also playable via GitHub Pages.
Project uses Three.js as a rendering library. It was written purely in JavaScript. I updated this fork to use a newer Vite system and updated to the newest Three.js from five year old code.
It's based on vue webpack config, so it can be developed, served and built without any hustle.
- Polybius theming
- Random parody message plays between levels (spoken aloud)
- 256 levels! 32 surfaces repeated through 8 color iterations (up from 99 levels)
- All 8 phases have unique music, backgrounds and easter eggs
- Boss fights after each 32-stage phase
- End game!
- Power-ups
- Particle Blaster - More powerful gun that does 2.5x damage
- Laser - No sharks attached sadly
- Rapid Fire - Fire super fast!
- Homing Missile - Locks on nearest target
- Spread weapon - Contra?
- Grenade Launcher
- Synth Sync - Only fires on beat, bit fires across 5 lanes!
- Weapon synergies for combining power-ups!
- Jump - Allows you to jump, jump
- Phantom - Allows your ship to safely phase through all damage for 12 seconds
- Shield - No timer. Lasts until shield is damaged. Protects you from one hit.
- Firewall - Lanes to the left and right of you damage Enemies
- Phase Dash - Dash through enemies to damage them
- Time Dilation - Time slows down for everything but you
- 1-Up - Mario?
- Timer Extend - Extend timers on current power-ups
- Warp Token - Collect 3 to warp to bonus stage
- Outta Here! - Rare drop of 5000 points and advance to the next stage
- Zappo 2000 - 2000 sweet points
- Enemy hit points and damage system
- Enemies have a 10% chance of having a shield
- New Enemies:
- Demon Heads
- Mutant Flippers
- Stealth Flippers
- Gravity Fuseballs
- Supernova Fuseballs
- Void Fuseballs
- Mega Pulsar
- Inverse Pulsar
- Chaos Pulsar
- Phantom Spiker
- Hydra Spiker
- Overdrive Spiker
- Pulsar Tanker
- Phantom Tanker
- Bomb Tanker
- Mirror
- Strong variants of all enemies
- More new enemies and variants coming soon!
- Bonus stage - collect 3 warp tokens and get taken to a bonus stage right out of Superman 64!
- YES EFFECT - pick up a power-up while warping out of a level to trigger an additional bonus power-up
- New controls and gamepad support
- Background music
- Game elements pulse to the beat (size + bloom + glow)
- Standard 60 FPS
- CRT bezel with working power button, contrast knob and brightness knob
- Pause screen
- Chaos Emeralds? What game is this?
- New sound effects
- Updated to latest Three.js
- Updated Vite build system
- Added in a sanity system and glitches.
- Attract mode
- Responsive design with live resize
All sounds and music used in Polybius are published on free-to-use licences or are AI generated. The VectorBattle font comes from fontspace.com and is published as Non-Commercial freeware. All other assets were created in-house.
Polybius likely never existed. This isn't claiming to be a real recreation. The parody messages are intended to be clearly parody / satire.