Whack-A-Burster

The Space Marines were pretty clever. With their advanced science, they simply beamed their dead off the battlefield to be recycled into another wave of soldiers. A gruesome and morally questionable mechanism of war, but one that led them to unstoppable success against any threat.

The enemy Xenomorphs would prove to be quite a different story. Wild, violent, but spectacularly intelligent, the alien creatures found they could simply nest inside their attacker's chests. This allowed them to follow the dead soldier as they're recycled into new, fresh men... behind enemy lines! Luckily, this cunning tactic was discovered early on.

This is where you come in:

• As the dead bodies drop in, the medical computer will scan them, searching for signs of an alien parasite.
• Compromised bodies are worthless, so BLAST THEM TO SMITHEREENS as soon as an ALERT sounds.
• Clean soldiers are automatically beamed back to the fray.
• Beware: shooting a soldier before the scan is complete is considered MURDER of a comrade, and your score will be docked.
• The higher your score, the more difficult it gets!

NOTE: This was originally an entry for the 29th Ludum Dare game jam. It has been refined greatly since the original version. While this is essentially just a sci-fi themed whack-a-mole game, it was enormously educational for me. It's absolutely rough, and I'm sure there are plenty of bugs to be fixed. But I found myself endlessly tweaking and adding this and that, and at this point I have to just let it go so I can move on.