Tumult

Andrew Vanbeck returns to Bumfun after his success with the excellent Dead Flesh Boy with this, a re-imagining of the classic Atari 2600 shooter, Turmoil.

Face wave after wave of colourful and relentless alien hordes, hell-bent on your destruction.

Figure out their strengths and weaknesses and use strategy to outthink (and outgun) the opposition.

Fight to survive in the tumultuous vortex of adrenaline-charged turmoil.

Instructions

So you've won another landmark battle for your space fleet and kick back in your cockpit for the hyperspace jump back to base. Unfortunately, everything has gone haywire mid-jump and your hyperdrive system has phase-shifted you into a parallel universe known to your people as the "Tumult". The technology to traverse the barrier between this dimension and our own is a secret closely guarded by the enemies of mankind and, until now, their origin and the location of their home turf have been a mystery to us. This all just changed.

With your cockpit full of smoke, sparks and steam, you slam the extractors into gear and bring your weapons systems to life. All around you is silent as you hover in the space between strange girder-like structures.

Then you see them. Flooding from the dark channels created by these odd, hovering planes come all manner of strange and wonderful alien craft. You make a mental note to collect some scraps for the R&D department back home, should you ever manage to escape.

However, for now, there's blasting to be done. It's time to take the fight to them!

Choose your control scheme at the main menu and press FIRE to begin the game (FIRE is SPACE if you have selected the keyboard option).

Navigate the central area of each level using the up and down controls. Fire at your enemies but watch out! Some enemies will be impervious to your attacks and you'll either need to find their weak spot, or avoid them.

Occasionally, fragments of destroyed alien craft will be left behind after an explosion. These can be collected by flying along the lane using the left or right control (depending on where the scrap appears). Once you have enough scraps, your onboard systems can use them to fashion another craft in your replicator, granting you a bonus ship.

Your hyperdrive is malfunctioning heavily, but is still spluttering to like occasionally. Destroying aliens seems to be generating a lot of poower which the drive seems to be somehow drawing from the area around you. Therefore, the more aliens you destroy, the more power the drive will take. Kill a certain amount of aliens and it'll be charged enough for a random, short-cycle jump. Most likely these will lead you to other areas of the Tumult but, you reason, if it's malfunctioned once, it can do so again (hopefully in your favour).

Who knows, someday you may be lucky enough to see home again but, until then, it's just a case of doing your best for the war effort for as long as you can.

Good luck, pilot. Humanity don't know it, but they're counting on you to strike a blow for the planetary federation!

Game Credits

Game: Andrew Vanbeck
Inlay & Design: Jamie Ball & George Cropper