Playable: Galactic Excavator
The first DTP Playables game, Galactic Xcavator, launched on Thanksgiving, November 28, 2024! This first game is a 60fps console-grade arcade space shooter created as an homage to the original Atari Asteroids arcade game.
Join The Mining Corporation today, and experience the thrills and rewards of space mining today!
About The Game
In Galactic Xcavator, you begin as the rookie pilot of Stardigger 1, a spaceship designed for mining minerals from meteors. Shoot the asteroids to break them down into smaller pieces and clear the sector. As you do, you'll see silver, gold, and diamonds released from the asteroid which can be picked up. Asteroids and enemey drones, when destroyed, may also drop a power-up you can collect to earn extra lives, extra shields, and weapon energy boosts.
Points are earned for score as you play, and money value is earned as you collect minerals. You will soon be able to upgrade your ship and firepower by purchasing upgraded ships using the money earned while mining along the way.
The Playables Engine
Galactic Xcavator was created as a simpler game to demonstrate the DTP Playables game engine's platform and 2D capabilities. I'm still really just getting started with this system. The goal is to have a platform similar to what is offered on PlayStation consoles and steam.
Games will have common features, and they all use your DTP account for tracking stats and play history. The platform also provides the common commerce features used across all games for inserting a coin into the game to play Paid mode (the full game), leaderboards, achievements and more. All games also let you take screenshots as you play, whcih are stored with your game session's history online to be shared.
The system is storing per-level stats and other data while you're playing. These become end game reports that you can browse here and share online for bragging rights among your friends & followers. Everything is sharable on social media and, at Gab.com, the games play in your posts (as an embed) without having to leave the site.
Coming Soon
We'll be adding more features and depth to the game play over time, including the ability to purchae updated ships in the game using credits earned while mining. Also, Stripe will soon be added as a payment method for purchasing Game Tokens, which can be used to play Paid mode.
I've gotten some good feedback from the first players of Galactic Xcavator, and will be addressing two issues tonight along with a more complete player signup flow in the games themselves. Turns out some keyboards don't have an Escape key, so I'll be adding the Enter key as an additional way to open the in-game menu, skip intros and cut scenes, etc.
I also need to fix a small bug where you can spam the shield button and deploy shields while shields are currently active.
