About

Shields Up! is based on the first game I made with DirectX back in the late 1990s.

Unfortunately, the original game and source code got lost at some points, so I decided to create a remake.

The remake differs from the original in some points:

• There is no „hard-core“ mode in the remake. In this mode the key layout was randomized and displayed when a new game was started.
• The game was (and still is) randomized, but in the remake, you can enter a seed to replay the same level.
• In addition you can set the the indviduall change the difficulty settings for all game mechancis.

How to play

Press W and S to activate the up and down shield, left and right arrow key to activate left and right shield.

• Use the shields (yellow = down, blue = up) to avoid damage by spaceships
• If any spaceship touches lowered shields, you will lose health (red top bar)
• If a life pot touches lowered shields, you will regenerate health (red top bar)
• Shields will fail, when the shield energy (blue top bar) is depleted 
• Keep shields down to regenerate shield energy

Trivia

The game does use the W, S, and left and right arrow keys, because on older keyboards (and even on some modern ones) it was not possible to press more than 3 arrow keys at a time.

If you want to learn more, check out "key rollover":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_rollover

If you want to test your keyboard, there are test sites available online:
https://www.mechanical-keyboard.org/de/key-rollover-tester/

Further development

Currently there are no plans to improve the game, but nothing is set in stone … :)

New in Version 1.1

• Added difficulty settings
• Fixed a bug which caused powerups to spawn quicker instead of slower