Games Afoot Software

Okay so I decided I wouldn’t be able to make 12 game demos, so I cut it down to 6. Still up in the air as to how I’m going to develop it. I’m thinking at the moment, 1 week for each, and then two weeks, and finally finishing it off in a month. Approximately 7 weeks per game. To make things even I might make the 6 week games, which would come up to just around 9 months for 6 games in total. Still deciding on whether I want to finish one game at a time (possible because then at least I will release every one and a half months), or whether I’ll run through each first week, then the two weeks then the month (which case you won’t see a finished game until June). It’s all very iffy. I plan on monetizing these games in one way or another hence why I want to release 6 next year.

This forth game I asked some people to give me three theme suggestions and a restriction suggestion. Not many people deigned to help however I did get “rational fear” “obliteration” and “pursuit” as my themes, and “no projectile weapons” as my only restriction. Themes and restrictions make me a bit more creative so I was trying to encourage people to do this. Some people I talk to claim they want me to finish something or anything for that matter but when you ask for help they tell you to do it yourself so really they don’t want you to finish anything they just want you to stop talking about it. But I digress

This game is called Pursuit (maybe it will be called something different later). I had this idea to do a sort of “deadly obstacle course” from a top-down perspective reminiscent of the eighties Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “The Running Man”. Or you can think of it as maybe as the scene in Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone where people are forced to run through a lethal maze. Something like that. The “pursuit” aspect comes from a vehicle that will trail behind you and kill you if you get too close to it. The “rational fear” aspect comes from the fact that the character will be fearing for his wife, which would be rational should anything like this ever happen, and the obliteration is the fact that you will get obliterated in the game quite literally 😉

In any case the demo just showcases a few of the obstacles, those blinking tiles, the one block that is not blinking, and the “sentry” which moves back and forth. The problem here is from the fact that the corridors are only 2 tiles wide, which means it’s a very tight fit. Of course if you time it properly you can get by rather easily. Later on though when the vehicle is chasing you and you’re trying to get by fast if there are a lot of these it might get real frustrating real quick. The only suggestions I can think of, are either making it stop at either end of the path, or, putting the sentry on the area above the corner, so that it goes the whole width of the screen before it comes back. This means you’ll have to be careful to be on one side of the corridor it’s traveling down, and have to wait until it’s away from the corner so you can move into it. I’ll show you what I mean, it’s the purple tile. As usually arrow keys to move.

Click the image to play.

Okay so this next version is going to actually include one of the solutions, if you notice it’s the full length. You can get around it easily by running into the upper wall.

Click the image to play.

Here it is, the final demo version of the game. That is, my third demo of my 12 single-month games. I also decided since I don’t think I will manage to get 9 more games done, that I will do 6 games,and expand them to two month versions over 2012. If by some miracle I manage 8, then they’ll go back to single-month games, but where september – december will be spend creating 8 new games for 2013. I know more complicated than it should be. But that is the nature of goals, always changing.

In this you win by getting to the goal, and lose by running out of time. Pick a block from the pair of blocks to see if you get an add (green) time, or a delete (red) time clock.

As usual arrows to move.

That’s it.

Click the image to play.

Okay so now we got some basic game play. Choose a block to hit, and then “collect” the clock by touching it. A special note: I realize you won’t want to touch the red “delete” time clocks, but this is part of the choice thing. You can choose to avoid it, which also means you may not get more green “add” time blocks. I figured this helped it be more of a choice then going with just what randomly came up.

In any case arrows to move. The timer counts down, but if you run out of time nothing happens. I will end the game/level with that. So the next thing I will do is end the game and add score, also a win condition which at this time is reaching the top. Then I will decide whether or not to add father time back in or move on to the next game.

Click the image to play.