198 Au is an arcade shoot-em-up where you fly through space and use a particle cannon to transmute blobs of mercury into (radioactive) gold.

Instructions

• Dodge mercury blobs. 
• Fire particles at mercury blobs to transmute.
• Destroy connected blobs for combo bonus points. 
• Collect gold to recover HP.

Try the game in your mobile browser for a classic Game Boy experience.

Known Major Bugs

• Softlock if first death is before first use of Thruster Boost. Please use Boost at least once in your first game after bootup.

Input Map

Input Action	Game Boy	Keyboard	Controller
Strafe	D-Pad	Arrow Keys, WASD	D-Pad
Fire Particle Cannon	A	Z, C, J	Nintendo A / Xbox B
Thruster Boost	B	X, K	Nintendo B / Xbox A
Start Game	Start	Return/Enter	Nintendo Start / Xbox Menu
n/a	Select	Shift	Nintendo Select / Xbox View
Toggle Fullscreen	n/a	F	Nintendo X / Xbox Y

Remarks

This game was inspired by experiments where scientists transmuted mercury to gold by bombarding it with neutrons. Well, I realized about a minute after the deadline that I may have titled the game with the wrong isotope. 

I will keep this version as-is to archive what was submitted to GBJAM 14. Fixes and improvements will go into a new page, perhaps titled with the correct gold isotope.

Thanks for playing my game.

Post-jam Plans

• Difficulty re-balancing
• Movement Overhaul
• Bug fixes
• Community feedback adjustments
• Mercury metaball VFX
• Uncollected gold decays back into mercury
• Max Combo Counter
• High Score / Post-Game Statistics
• Stages/waves (and a final boss?)

Tools Used

Game Engine	Godot (license)
Pixel Art	Aseprite
Mobile Button Textures	Inkscape
Music and SFX	GB Studio/hUGEDriver, Audacity, Furnace Tracker

Special Thanks

• Palette by Rugi-Pixels (https://lospec.com/palette-list/rgr-papercut4 )
• Fonts by Kenney (https://kenney.nl/assets/kenney-fonts)
• GBJAM organizers, moderators, and community