A pixel art platformer that started life as a board game.
RAY and the 13th Squadron have to clear the BUGs out of a base full of ladders, energy lifts and acid pools. It was born in 2018 as a board game and now, with the same pixel art, it is becoming a video game.
The board game
POWERUP is a semi-cooperative dungeon crawler for 1 to 5 players that emulates run-and-gun 2D platformers, with a 16-bit pixel art look.
The world is being invaded by some very annoying creatures called BUGs. They crawl into our homes, steal our breakfasts and defile our garden gnomes. The only defence is THE BLOCK, an outlaw organisation that protects the planet from beings from other dimensions. You are part of its assault team, the 13th Squadron: the BUGBUSTERS.
There are three modes. Story is cooperative, with four missions that reveal the plot. In Arcade you build your own board and fight wave after wave of BUGs. Deathmatch pits two teams against each other in capture the flag. One player can also take the role of the BUGMISTRESS, supreme leader of the BUGs.
Squash bugs! Run! Shoot pixels! Level up and power up!
- Year
- 2018
- Players
- 1 to 5
- Playing time
- 60–120 minutes
- Age
- 8 and up
- Design and art
- Ramón Redondo
- Publishers
- Tempus Fugit Games and TOY games
- Funding
- Kickstarter
More about the board game
The squares
The board is built from tiles of 3×3 squares, and the video game follows the same rules as the manual.
Normal
The bar at the top is an obstacle: it holds you up if you are in the square above.
No bar
Nothing holds you up in the square above, so you fall. Falling more than one square costs lives.
Ladder
Climb up or down to the square above.
Automatic staircase
Carries you up to the square above on its own.
Acid
Everything that falls in disintegrates.
Gateway
Takes you to another gateway. One of them is the exit.
Spike trap
Costs you a life and pushes you back.
From the table to the screen
The board already imitated a platform video game, so the next step was to make the real thing.
The prototype uses the same tiles as the board game, the original character sprites and the game’s music. Level 1 is built from 15 real 2018 tiles: 15 squares wide by 9 high, with eight kinds of BUG.
Level 1: the base
This is the whole first level in cross-section, exactly as the prototype builds it. Scroll sideways to explore it.
The BUGBUSTERS
Eight heroes of the 13th Squadron, each with an epic version that is tougher and better armed.
- RAY
Mission first. Now.
- ANA
It’s always a good time for a fight.
- LPZ
You can be sexy and lethal at the same time.
- MAC
Ya don’t wear anything under the kilt.
- MAI
Shh!
- PAM
Yipi ka yei!
- PNK
Hey, ho! Let’s go!
- TOR
Sayonara, BUGs.
The bugs
What infests the base: from the BUGGIE patrolling every square to the armoured BUGDOZER. And behind them all, the BUGMISTRESS. Hover over them to see them attack.
- BUGGIE
- BATBUG
- BIGBUG
- BICEFALUS
- BRASAS
- BLOB
- BUGDOZER
- BURP
Play the demo
A playable prototype of level 1: explore the base, climb to the upper floors, defeat the BUGDOZER and go through the EXIT gateway. It runs in the browser with a keyboard or a gamepad.
- ← →
- Move
- Space
- Jump one square, straight or diagonally up
- X
- Shoot
- ↑ ↓
- Climb ladders
- ↑
- Use a gateway
- R
- Restart
You can watch it on a phone, but for now it is played with a keyboard or a gamepad.
Gallery
Every sprite, tile and animation in the game, 839 pieces at their original resolution. Click any of them to see it enlarged and download it.