Champions of Breakfast

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Champions of Breakfast logo

Champions of Breakfast is Pirate Software's first game. It was meant as a way for their team to learn the ins and outs of GameMaker, Steam and the publishing process. The game is a 2D, twin-stick shooter with procedurally generated infinite levels. The goal of the game is to obtain the highest score possible before your inevitable demise.

The game was released on the Steam platform on 2016-06-23, with a retail price of $2.99 (in the United States).

The game marks the first appearance of Baron, a character from Heartbound, though it's merely a cameo role.

Thor cites Asteroids as the primary inspiration for the game.

Gameplay

The player controls one of multiple possible "champions", which vary in their attack (damage dealt), defense (health) and fire rate. Using WASD and mouse or the left and right analogue sticks on a controller, the player will move the character freely along a two-dimensional field, dodging bullets and aiming and firing their own. The player will acquire a variety of different power-ups, the effects of which will vary depending on their selected champion. The player will go through five levels in a random order (Garage, Bathroom, Living Room, Kitchen, Backyard), each of which follows a specific theme with its enemy designs, but the actual enemy placements and patterns are randomized. A boss awaits at the end of each level, defeating whomst will provide a selection of one of three powerups for the player to choose from. Once all five levels are completed, the game begins anew, but this time the enemy placements and bullet patterns are more difficult.

Anti-piracy mechanism

The game makes use of its Steam Achievements as a form of an ad-hoc save file. The game will read the acheivement list whenever it starts up, "loading" the player progress based on the acheivements that have been unlocked. The game "saves" progress by unlocking new acheivements, and refreshing its internal state whenever they unlock to provide the player with the new characters/powerups that they have just unlocked.

Since there is an achievement for merely starting the game, which unlocks the first playable character, the game is not playable without a working connection to the Steam client. A connection to the Steam network, however, is not required, as achievements are also usable in Steam's offline mode.

Additionally, the game makes use of Steam Leaderboards to store its high scores. If the game fails to find its leaderboard, it will crash.

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