Escape from Mars

Escape of Mars is a roguelike of sorts set on the planet Mars. The backstory reads as follows:

You are a maintenance man working at Mars Base 1. Whilst repairing an antenna off-base you receive a garbled distress call from back at base. Something about utility robots going haywire and taking the colonists hostage. You rush back to the airlock to investigate...

Development has taken thus far a couple of weeks - significantly longer than the usual 3-4 days. I'm unsure about the final result having played it so much during development. It functions as I'd intended though and I'm happy with the look and sound of the game. I'd like to have put more puzzles in but there wasn't time. There also needs to be more to do in the game - there's much scope for adding inventory items and other tasks for the player to do.

Techinically I'm pretty happy with how the code works and fits together. Having made Unit 4 a few weeks before, which was a very simple turn-based game, I was able to expand that little engine.

The game was written for UDGJ #2 and can be played here.

Unit 4

Unit 4 is a minmial roguelike created for the 7 Day Broughlike Game Jam.

The game contains many aspects of a “Berlin” roguelike : procedurally generated levels, perma-death, polymorphism, turned-based melee combat etc. The design is highly compressed like most Brough games and is easy to pick up and play.

The story is inspired by the 1966 movie “Fantastic Voyage” where a submarine is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into a patient’s blood stream with a small crew. Problems arise almost as soon as they enter the bloodstream. In this case, you’re a single person in a survival suit.

Those problems come in the form of antibodies roaming around looking for foreign invaders (you).

There are also nano-bot remnents scattered around which can be collected and used. Using an item for the first time reveals its properties.

Net Runner

Having been mostly partaking in game jams run by streamers I follow, Cyberpunk Jam 2019 was something of a step into the unknown.

Cyberpunk is one of my favourite sub-genres of science-fiction, so the prospect of doing that sort of game was an exciting one.

Initial thoughts floated around adventure type games in the area of Dreamweb, but that's an awful lots of work, particularly in the graphics department. I eventually elected to make a hacking puzzle game in the style of Exploit, an old Flash game.

The aesthetic was near the top of my list of priorities - that is, bright neon-glowing colours contrasted in darkness and fog. The game layout itself is very simple: a 9x9 grid of tiles, mostly blank but with some 'node' tiles scattered around that do various things.

Part of the way through, I was concerned the game was going to be too simplistic and easy but once I started designing some more complex levels, quite the opposite was true - it's jolly tricky.

Overall, I'm pleased with the game. The graphics and sound go well together and the game-play is smooth. Feedback so far as been overwhelmingly positive and helpful.

Play Net Runner in browser. There's also a Windows download.