Slordax: The Unknown Enemy is a vertically scrolling shooter developed and published by Softdisk in 1991. The developers of the game left to found id Software soon after its creation, and Slordax was also marketed by Softdisk as part of The Lost Game Collection of ID Software along with several games created by id on contract for Softdisk.^[1]

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Quick Facts Slordax: The Unknown Enemy, Developer(s) ...

Slordax: The Unknown Enemy
Title screen
Developer(s)	Softdisk
Publisher(s)	Softdisk
Director(s)	Tom Hall
Programmer(s)	John Carmack
Artist(s)	Adrian Carmack
Platform(s)	MS-DOS
Release	1991
Genre(s)	Scrolling shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player

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Seven centuries ago, a war was waged by the Slordax that lasted a hundred years as they tried to conquer the universe. Currently the Intergalactic Defense Alliance (I.D.A.) believes that Slordax will return and start another devastating war. The I.D.A. sends a fighter pilot in a RedDog Adaptive Strike Ship to destroy the enemy bases in the Slordian galaxy before the Slordax can build their forces.^[2]

The player moves through five stages destroying enemies, avoiding traps and collecting powerups. When the player reaches the end point of the stage, all enemies on screen must be destroyed to proceed to the next stage. The player begins with a single shot projection and a two lives. When the player's ship is destroyed, a life is lost and the ship's firepower resets back to a single shot. After all five stages are completed, the game loops back to the first stage.

Development was being done in conjunction with Shadow Knights around 1990. At that time Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons was in development outside working hours with Softdisk.^[3] Slordax was the first game to make use of Tile Editor v1.01 (TED1).^{[4][relevant?]}