Attack of the Grayliens

About the Game

You are Lennard Da'Swole-E, humanities last hope to once again spread color on this gray planet, after the Grayliens invaded earth five years ago and took away all the vibrant colors.

Use your military grade paintball gun and your trusty army of Pendulum Paint Drones to get rid of the invaders while creating a beautiful chaotic painting on the map over the course of your run.

Controls: 
W/A/S/D: Movement
Left / Right Arrow Key: Change shooting direction
Q: Switch between weapons
E: Switch between colors (once unlocked)
ESC: Pause

Screenshots

Background

Attack of the Grayliens is a horde-survival game created as part of Pirate Software's 14th Game Jam with the theme of "It's Spreading" by a group of five friends, who felt inspired and motivated to create a game of their own and to learn something new along the journey.

Some of us placed their first nodes in Godot, some of us pixeled their first pixel in Aseprite and others ordered themselves a MIDI keyboard and despaired over how to use Ableton Live.

But in the end we had a lot of fun during those two weeks that went into the game. It might not be the most impressive to the seasoned gamer, but to us it's a great achievement looking back at where we started and seeing how far we have come.

There are many ideas that went unrealized (for now), like giving the paint actual gameplay mechanics, adding items, adding a level-up system and many others. But we are happy to say the game is playable and we hope you enjoy it for what it is.

Feel free to leave us feedback and get out there making a game yourself, if we were able to, you are as well.

Lore and Fluff

In the year 2077.5, humanity found itself at an all-time low.

The creative arts as we knew them have long since perished.
Bands no longer covered Wonderfence in crammed and smoky venues, artists no longer observed slowly rotting apples and eternalized them in utterly bland still-life paintings, nor did Japanese subculture produce suggestive imagery of skimpily dressed girls.

The advancement of AI art and LLMs has long since enabled the average person to conjure up any song or image they could ever think of. Art had lost it's very soul, it's very excitement that it once bestowed upon the masses.

What mankind failed to realize though, was that they indeed were not alone. Many decades have they tried to contact extraterrestrial life to no avail.
But they were always watching.

25.25 galaxies away, the Grayliens, a race of proud and cultured aliens priding themselves in their beautiful greyscale paintings, were watching in utter disgust as the creative spark fizzled out on planet earth.

Until they could no longer take it.
They boarded their ships and set course for the blue sphere 25.25 galaxies away to punish the fools that sacrificed their creativity for convenience.

With their highly advanced technology they began to rid the earth of its vibrant colors, because what use were colors if they weren't used for creating beautiful paintings and artworks.

Humanity tried to put up a fight, but it was a futile one. Soon enough all that was left was grey - about 49 shades of it.

But when humanity was at its lowest, that's when they unleashed him.

It was a grey day (like any other day) when he finished his rigorous training regime in the top-secret military facility where he has fired paintguns, swung brushes and created art of the olden times for the last five years.

As their last hope to bring the R, the G and the B back into this world, the military picked up a homeless and impoverished artist from the streets, one of the last ones who even knew what a brush was.

That man was Lennard Da'Swole-E - or at least that's what they call him now, just look at those abs.

With a passion for mediocre art and his 20cm brush (fine art was never his strength) he set out to fight back against the Grayliens and to bring color back this world, so humanity may once again rekindle their love for art with a human touch.

The Team

Name	Function	Contact
Cupcake Frog	Artist	Twitter
CloneJT	Artist	Discord: clonejt
Saltcannon5K	Programmer	Twitter
GreyCatGG	Programmer	Twitter
Kajitsuken	Music and Audio	Twitter

Assets and software used

All assets in the game were fully handcrafted by the team and no additional resources were sourced from anywhere else.

All art was created in Aseprite by CloneJT and Cupcake Frog, while the game's theme song "Grayt Times" was composed and mastered by Kajitsuken in Ableton Live.

All source code for the game was written from scratch by GreyCatGG and Saltcannon5K and Godot was used as our game engine of choice.

Issues and potential Fixes

If the game is laggy for you in the web browser, see if you have Hardware Acceleration turned on in your browser's settings, that might fix it for you!