I have a new (and possibly final) version of the game ready for release once the competition is over. This includes fixing a small obscure spawning related bug and making a subtle play-balance tweak.

I just added 10 playing tips (above) to help you defend Plangoria.

Video trailer has been added. Hen-joy!

ChrisB, thanks for your nice comments. My goal was to create a quality old school arcade shooter in the spirit of Galaga and Missile Command. Yes, I spent a lot of time fussing over the design, graphics and game play. I'm glad that it shows. :-)

Snky, thanks for your comments and suggestions. By manual controls do you mean something other than the A / D controls to speed-up and slow down? The orbiter's altitude is fixed by design.

Plangoria is the best GameMaker title I've tested. It's polished, bug free and most important: fun!

Game Play: The structure is that of a retro shooter with progressively harder waves of saucers leading to very cool boss-battles. What makes it unique is that you are defending your planet. The game mechanics lend itself to a more strategic approach.

Graphics: This game plays in full screen with a very clean and stylized presentation. It has a 50s retro feel with bright primary colors and some nice shading and rendering. There was a lot of love and put into the graphics.

Sound: The sound really shins with sub-woofer-shaking explosions along side a variety of retro space-battle sounds. The boss's in particular have a lot of personality.

I strongly recommend you give this game a try!

It's nice, i like the effects, fun! keep up the good work!

consider animating the background yourself using objects / ps system?
what about manual control over spinning around the planet? ( I think that would be good ).

To play the game:

1) Install the free Steam version of GameMaker Studio.
2) Subscribe to the game using the provided link.
3) Open GameMaker Studio and choose PLAY. The game will be available for download.