🛸 TUI Invaders

The classic Space Invaders experience, rebuilt for your terminal.

Built with OpenTUI for buttery-smooth terminal rendering.

Features

• 🎨 True pixel-art ships — half-block rendering with per-cell colors for crisp visuals
• 🕹️ Four-direction flight — move freely in the lower half of the arena with arrows or WASD, including diagonals. Fly closer for faster hits or hang back for more reaction time; enemies must cross a fixed bottom defense line, not your current altitude
• 👾 Boss fights — starting at level 3, then every 3 levels, with health bars and explosive finales
• 🐋 Special operations — after losing 25% health, Dax at level 6 calls in Operation Cheepseek's whale escorts, while Luke / Hona at level 9 calls in Gemini For Life's twin stars. Cinematic backup calls transition automatically back into combat. Kit arrives at level 12; subsequent bosses return to Dax with rotating shooting styles
• 🧩 Kit // The Effect Evangelist — level 12 starts immediately, without an arrival cinematic. At 75% health, “Rewrite in Effect!” becomes a large arcade headline and two Extensions shield Kit. Destroy them to damage him again. At 50%, “Endomorphisms are inherently monoidal!” introduces aimed bursts and three new shield Extensions. Both power-up scenes restore 15% of maximum health and clear old attacks; tips follow the reveal. Gold Extensions warn before firing. Defeating Kit awards 3,000 points and a brief crying-portrait farewell: “Fine. I'll blog about this.” The next wave follows automatically
• 🛸 Boss reinforcements — Dax refills three whales every nine seconds; Luke refills four Gemini stars every 5.5 seconds. Fewer survivors get wider patrol routes; defeating the boss takes down the whole squad. Boss fights allow up to six pickups, with a three-second drop cooldown
• 🌠 Gemini For Life — Luke fires left/center/right twin volleys in randomized order, with a return-fire window. Four-point stars ease through patrol turns; wounded stars mark a fixed dive lane, then grow into smoothly accelerating falling stars. Once a dive is signaled, shots pass through: dodge the star! Stars are killable before committing, and defeating Luke clears all remaining stars
• ⚡ Power-up drops — gun upgrade, rapid fire, shield, spread, triple shot, and the elusive extra life
• 🎯 Earn your upgrades — clearing a wave grants 1 permanent gun XP (2 for bosses); gun pickups add extra XP. The second barrel unlocks at level 4, damage caps at four per bullet at level 5, and firing speed improves from level 6. Level 7 adds piercing; extra barrels come only from temporary pickups. Boss damage can shake loose supplies, with paced, need-aware drops rather than a loot shower
• 🦋 Weavers — from wave 10, bow-tie-shaped ships alternate a three-shot outward fan with two inward-crossing shots, leaving 2.8 seconds between volleys. Their armor matches bruisers and snipers
• 🔥 Bosses keep up — later bosses gain substantially more health without scaling to your pickups. Aimed bursts target your current lane and leave shorter recovery windows below half health
• 💪 Stronger, not just more — regular formations grow slowly to at most 24 ships (fewer in small terminals). Scouts stay fragile; bruisers and snipers are armored for two full volleys, bursters and dreadnoughts for three. Armor follows wave progression rather than your pickups, so extra upgrades still give you an edge
• 🎯 High-speed sniper shots — snipers launch faster aimed shots than other regular enemies, with projectile speed keeping pace as difficulty rises
• ✨ Starfield background with animated particles for that arcade atmosphere
• 🏆 Persistent high scores — compete with yourself (or your friends)
• ⏸️ Pause anytime — because life happens

Requirements

• Bun >=1.3.0

Quick Start

# Play instantly (no install required)
bunx tui-invaders

# Or install globally
bun install -g tui-invaders
tui-invaders

Jump straight to a level with --level (Hona is level 9, Kit is 12):

tui-invaders --level 9
# From this repository:
bun run start --level 9
# Kit's encounter:
bun run start --level 12

Restarting returns to the selected level. You begin with the usual starting lives and gun. Kit has mid-fight cinematics at 75% and 50% health, without an arrival intro; Dax and Hona call backup after losing 25% health.

Power-up cinematics restore 15% of the boss's maximum health when they finish (capped at full health). Hona's level-9 stars have 24 HP, enough to survive a level-6 full volley and begin their dive warning. Aimed enemy shots stay within a downward cone rather than firing sideways or upward.

Controls

The start screen lets you choose OpenCode or OpenCodeJr. Jr keeps its googly eyes in the selection preview and wears dark shades during gameplay. Use Left/Right or A/D to choose, then Enter or Space to launch. Both use the same gun progression. Restart returns to selection and remembers your last choice. Embedded hosts can call game.start() to launch directly.

| Key | Action | | -------- | ---------------- | | ← / A | Move left | | → / D | Move right | | ↑ / W | Move up | | ↓ / S | Move down | | Space | Shoot | | P | Pause / resume | | R | Restart (on game over) | | Ctrl+C | Quit |

Diagonal movement has the same overall speed as straight flight. Resizing preserves your relative altitude. A hit briefly flashes the ship and gives you time to retreat; ramming a boss costs a life without defeating it.

High Scores

Your best scores are saved automatically:

| Platform | Location | | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | Linux | $XDG_DATA_HOME/tui-invaders/highscores.json (or ~/.local/share/tui-invaders/) | | macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/tui-invaders/highscores.json | | Windows | %APPDATA%\tui-invaders\highscores.json |

Development

# Install dependencies
bun install

# Run in development mode
bun run start

# Type-check
bun run check

# Run tests
bun test

Embedding

The standalone game and embedded integrations share the same host-driven game session. Import InvadersGame, provide dimensions, forward input, and render it into an OpenTUI TextRenderable owned by your application:

import { InvadersGame } from "tui-invaders/embed"

const game = await InvadersGame.load(width, height)
game.step()
game.draw(canvas)

Use game.press(key) / game.release(key) for held-key input (including simultaneous directions). For terminals or hosts without release events, use game.tap(key) on each press/repeat so movement stops when events stop.

License

MIT

bright rules