Starfighter

Project: Starfighter is a 2D shoot'em up game by Stephen Sweeney and Richard Sweeney of Parallel Realities. It can run on Mac and Linux platforms. It relies on the SDL library. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Development
For Parallel Realities, Starfighter is the first game to be written in the C++ programming language, the first to be licensed under the GPL, and the first to be written for the Linux platform.

The versions released by Parallel Realities (versions 1.0 and 1.1) were not libre. They contained non-libre graphics, sound effects, and music. In 2012, this was addressed by Guus Sliepen and some other contributors; all of the graphics and sounds were replaced, and version 1.2 was released. However, this version was not a truly libre game either, because the asteroid and ore graphics were derived from an image on Wikipedia that was mislabelled.

In 2015, The Diligent Circle picked up the game and released version 1.3. This was the first libre version of the game. This version also contained various other changes.

In 2019, the project was migrated from Savannah to GitHub and version 2.0 was released, described as a "major milestone" with changes including conversion from C++ to C, translation support, and improved emulation of the original game in Classic difficulty.

Gameplay
In Starfighter, players fly the spacecraft Firefly in different missions, shooting down various enemies as well as completing the presented objectives. The players play in top-down view mode during missions, complete with various useful stats such as shield, ammo, and others.

The game is linear, though players can complete some missions in different orders. In later star systems, players will randomly encounter enemy patrols as they move to different planets. In some cases, players have to fly around to different planets randomly to complete a mission such as the pursuit of an experimental fighter.

Players also have the chance to upgrade their spacecraft with various weapons and the ability to buy additional ammos and ammo capacity from the shop.

As players progress through the game, they will encounter new enemy spacecrafts, boss battles, new wingmates (allies who help you in some of your mission), and new star systems. Players also will be able to buy new weapons such as homing missiles and laser cannons.

Story
The story of the game is about Chris and his friends against the megacorp WEAPCO. This company, WEAPCO, gained power by crushing two opposing factions that it previously supplied weapons to.

Chris begins his adventure when he steals a firefly from WEAPCO and then has to confront the WEAPCO patrols chasing him.

Receptions
Starfighter is given the rating of 5 out of 5 on the average of 19 ratings on happypenguin.