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
New in v.3!
- Button x has the same functionality as the up arrow during the game. This is much better for touch controls and retro-handhelds <3
- Added "+x" text when joy is collected
- Each skin is associated with a main and a secondary colors that customize the look of presents and texts
- Added more dynamism to the pile of presents carried around by drones
- Improved the player's movement in the horizontal direction
- Added a particle effect that follows the player's movements
Screenshots
Controls
In game:
Arrow keys (<-,->): accelerates the drone horizontally
Arrow up (^) and button X: accelerates the drone upwards
(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
-
v.4:
-- Add more skins (Link and Mario are coming to town!)
-- Add optional custom skins for presents associated with their drones - TBD:
-- Speed: as the player progresses during game, everything should move faster. Of course, there should be some kind of reward for the fastest player. I will think about it :)
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: 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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