SANTA'S DRONES
Have you ever wondered why you never received that Christmas present you always wanted? Maybe Santa Claus needs an updgrade to keep up with the demographic expansion of the last years. That old magic sled won't be able to carry all the presents anymore, so some lost packet is inevitable at some point! Become a Santa's drone to deliver all the lost presents in order to save Christmas and bring back the Joy to the world!
-> I believe Christmas is much more that receiving a present, btw xD
Updates
- V.2: Fixed a bug that blocked the game when you reached 500 Joy Points... Now you can actually beat the game without any worries! :)
Screenshots
Controls
In game:
Arrow keys (<-,^,->): move the drone
(notice that the drone accelerates at first, so long press these buttons to actually move around)
In menus:
Arrow keys (<-,^,->): navigate the menu / the tutorial / the skins
X: confirm / select
(X is the 'X' key on the keyboard if you are on pc, or the embedded X button if you are on a mobile phone)
Rules and hints
- Collect all the presents you find during your flights and deliver them to houses to gain Joy Points.
- You can carry more than one present at a time. Delivering two or more packets at a time will give you extra points!
- Gain Joy Points to unlock the drone skins! Visit the skin menu to personalize your adventures choosing the look of your drone among the unlocked avatars!
- Beware of the Anti-Christmas bots and viruses, they will strive to block your joyful quest!
- As a real drone, you have a limited amount of battery life. Collect the flying batteries to recharge your drone!
Features
- Procedural generation: every run is unique as all the elements you come across are procedurally generated. The generation algorithm is designed so that some elements (e.g. presents and bots) are generated more frequently than others (e.g. batteries and houses), but generation probabilities are always updated so that every element is generated at some point in time (at least, on average and asymptotically, if this means something to you!)
- Skin systems: there are 15 unlockable skins. Collect them all to become the MJDOTY(Most Joyful Drone Of The Year)!
- ENG and ITA translations. More on this later.
Translation
Santa's Drones supports both english and the italian language. Why? As we say in Italy: it's all a "magna magna"! :)
Seriously speaking, I'm very proud to see that my very first Pico 8 project speaks my language! Also, this game was meant to be a little present for my family, relatives, and all of my friends, so an italian translation was just... part of the game, actually!
Future plans
This is my first complete Pico-8 project. I really enjoy developing games on this platform, and I'm still learning tips and tricks on it. I think the game is almost finished, however there are a couple of improvements that I would like to implement. First of all, I would like to introduce different power-ups to be acquired during the game (e.g. a shield to protect you for a limited period of time). Then, I think a good next step would be to design an increasing difficulty during a run (e.g. things move faster and faster as you collect Joy Points). Due to lack of time these features are not present in this first version of the game, but I really hope to upload an upgrade soon! Hopefully, any further comments by the community will help me find other ways to improve the game! :)
Credits
All the code, draws, and music are created by me using the Pico-8 editor.
I would like to thank the following people for the help provided during the development:
- Astrid "Cicia": for the tests and for the texts supervision
- Francesco "Sorty" and Andrea "Genna": for the accurate tests and suggestions
About me
I am Fabio Castello from Milan, Italy. I'm a computer science engineer and I love videogames! I'm also a musician and I play the piano and the keyboards, and this helped while writing the music for the game. I really hope you'll enjoy Santa's Drones at least a percentage of how much I enjoyed developing it! Please drop a comment or send me an email([email protected]) if you like the game and/or if you have any suggestion.
Have fun and always bring joy to the world!
- Fabs
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