Blasterama was written by R. S. Brook as an example of python game programming for his sons.

This straight-forward arcade game reminded me a lot of the atari games I played growing up. Since I had access to the source code, I hacked in joystick support. Pygame does a great job at reducing the complexity of joysticks, so this was easy. Next I started cleaning up the code to make it easier to add the following features to the game:

• a lives system
• scoring
• background music
• a wave-level system
• ship defense shields
• scrolling starfield background
• game restart
• different sized aliens
• windows setup installer
• a backstory for the game :-D

So download the Windows package now or grab the source code. It’s good for a laugh!