Aero Chaos

Aero Chaos is a side-scrolling shooter in the same vein as Gradius or R-Type. You fly a fighter jet while battling against waves of enemies, and collecting power-ups to upgrade your jet's firepower. The game consists of three stages with a boss encounter at the end of each.

How to Play
From the title up screen you have a few options. You can adjust the difficulty ranking from "Pushover" to "Impossible". You can also toggle the music, sound effects and graphic quality. After choosing your option, click on "Start Mission" to begin. You can cancel back to the main menu at any time during play by clicking the "Abort Mission" button.

Control
Maneuver the jet by placing your mouse cursor on the game screen. The jet will follow your mouse cursor, but it cannot move as fast as your mouse cursor, so extremely quick maneuvers will not work.

Hold down the left mouse button to fire your weapons. You may also toggle an auto-fire mode by pressing the Backspace key.

To use any available bombs, press the Space Bar.

Power-ups
All power-ups in the game have a "stacking" feature which means they become stronger the more you collect them. In other words, if you collect one power-up, and then another of the same type afterward, it becomes even stronger. If at any time your fighter is destroyed, you will lose all power-ups you have gained as well as any extra bombs above your starting limit. (See difficulty modes) All "Max Level" upgrades are temporary, and will revert to the previous 3rd level upgrade after 30 seconds or so.


 * Bullets: Bullet upgrades increase the amount of bullets you shoot at one time. Icon is a yellow-white oval.
 * 1 upgrade: Gives you two parallel forward firing shots.
 * 2 upgrades: Gives you an upward angled shot in addition to the previous upgrade.
 * 3 upgrades: Gives you a downward angled shot in addition to the previous upgrades.
 * 4 upgrades (Max Level): Temporarily increases the damage dealt by the two forward firing shots. Indicated by the green color of the bullets.
 * Escort Jet: Escort Jets rotate around your jet and fire along with you. Icon is a... well... I have no idea what it's supposed to be. It looks like a pocket knife. Black and silver.
 * 1 upgrade: Adds one escort jet to rotate around your jet and fire.
 * 2 upgrades: Adds a second escort jet top rotate around your jet and fire.
 * 3 upgrades: Escort jets now fire a second shot that arcs upward before going forward.
 * 4 upgrades (Max Level): Temporarily increases the rate of fire for the escort jets.
 * Missiles: A slow, but damaging forward firing missile. Upgrades increase the amount of missiles fired. Icon is a silver missile.
 * 1 upgrade: Adds a forward firing missile.
 * 2 upgrades: Adds a second forward firing missile.
 * 3 upgrades: Adds a third missile that arcs downward before going forward.
 * 4 upgrades (Max Level): Temporarily adds two additional red-colored forward firing missiles, and doubles missile firing rate.
 * Bombs: Adds to your bomb cache. Bombs destroy everything on screen when you press the Space Bar. Be warned that they will also vaporize any uncollected power-ups on screen.

Difficulty modes

 * Pushover: Start with 40 lives and 20 bombs. Most normal enemies can be killed with one shot and have a very slow firing rate.
 * Easy: Start with 8 lives and 4 bombs. Most normal enemies take two hits to kill and have an increased firing rate.
 * Normal: Start with 4 lives and 2 bombs. Most normal enemies take 2-4 hits to kill. Their firing rate is slightly faster than in Easy mode.
 * Hard: Start with 3 lives and 2 bombs. Most normal enemies take 3-8 hits to kill. Their firing rate is the same as in Normal mode.
 * Very Hard: Start with 3 lives and 2 bombs. Most normal enemies take 6-16 hits to kill. Their firing rate is the same as in Normal mode.
 * Impossible: Start with 3 lives and 2 bombs. Most normal enemies cannot be killed by regular fire while onscreen (Presumably taking over 20 hits to kill). Upgrades are required for survival. The enemy firing rate is extremely fast; twice as fast as Normal/Hard/Very-Hard mode.

Tips
Points are added to your score by collecting power-ups, destroying enemies and defeating bosses. If playing for score, it's best to play on "Pushover" as harder difficulties will have no greater effect on your final score.

The game automatically ends after you kill the third boss. There is no option to continue with your existing score and you must submit to finish.

Many normal enemies follow a simple path or pattern. Some also have a very easily recognized firing pattern. Try to remember which enemies do what attacks in order to properly position your fighter jet when attacking.

Since your mouse moves faster then your ship can, be wary when trying to dodge bullets or enemies. Don't try to move along a curve too quickly, or your ship will head straight toward your cursor, rather than follow along the curve.

When killed you will respawn wherever your mouse cursor is currently placed (regardless of where you were killed) and have a few seconds of invincibility. Use this to respawn in a safe area, or to grab some well-guarded power-ups.

You are also invincible for a few seconds after using a bomb. This makes stockpiling bombs for boss fights ideal as they also do heavy damage, and power-ups are unlikely to show up during boss fights.

The second and third/final boss have a second phase after being destroyed once, so try not to go all out during their first attacks.

Bugs
Occasionally you may find yourself collecting a power-up only to find it had no effect or did not register as an upgrade. This is a rare but unfortunate occurrence.