This is another fast-paced neo-arcade shooter. As with many of my games, this is based on the traditional arcade formula. I developed the idea while writing Popaloon. I noticed that there is a lot of satisfaction in popping huge groups of balloons, which made me decide to incorporate that concept into an arcade style shooter. Now, it would be a little uninteresting to fly around in a ship destroying bubbles, so I decided to make them eggs, which would hatch into a range of different enemies. It seemed natural to go a step further and have the enemies laying new eggs at increasing speed. And so “Replicator” was born.

One of my favorite features of “Replicator” is the particle effect when eggs and bugs explode. In order to maintain speed, I couldn’t use my normal particle effect–simply deploying an array of particle sprites in different directions. This is because “Replicator” has a lot of onscreen elements to maintain. And I wanted the particle effect to be a lot richer than normal. The simplest solution was to make the particle effect into a sprite. By doing this I could make the effect quite rich, with many particles, but the computer would only need to update one sprite. An obvious solution, really.

Read the jayisgames review on Replicator here: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2005/01/replicator.php