Have you ever wanted to see a Missile Command clone feature missiles that use lock-on and realistic homing? No aiming required! Missiles use proportional navigation to home in on their target, so there is absolutely nothing for you to do! (yet)
Features:
-Randomly Generated terrain
-Smart Bombs that fly around explosions in front of them
-Enemy Aircraft dropping said Smart Bombs
-Aforementioned Proportional Navigation on all missiles
-the eternal darkness
Todo:
-Maybe make it a playable tower defense style game? Or a game at all.
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Summary
Project Echidna is a short skill-based RPG where you explore an abandoned laboratory to recover an old prototype. In this game multiple enemies can fight you at once, so plan your battles accordingly! Lure enemies into corners and fight them one on one, or avoid them altogether. If you are very skilled, you can fight them off all at the same time! There is no Level system, there is no output randomness, it is just your ability to fight with the tools you have.
Overworld Enemies
Enemies can see you if they have line-of-sight, or you get too close. If they touch you they can engage in a battle! In this battle all enemies could can see you will be in combat, so watch out!
Battle!
Battle works similar to any other RPG: You get an action, then each of the enemies gets an action.
If you die in combat you will just be brought to the start of your current room, so no big deal!
On your action you will play a short minigame that represents that action, no leveling or randomness here!
You have five choices of action, some having secondary effects:
Your Actions:
Pocket Knife
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[14x16] |
O'l Reliable. This attack hits one target, and if you do well enough it will stun your target, completely removing their action this turn! Quite useful if you are paying attention to what each enemy is going to do.
Tail Strike
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[14x16] |
This attack hits every target at once, and it gets easier to use effectively the more enemies are in battle with you. Using it will also remove the Slowed condition from yourself.
Fire Bolt
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[14x16] |
Harder to land a hit than the Pocket Knife, but this magic spell packs a punch! It can burn an enemy if you are very accurate. Burned enemies take 10% damage every turn, very good against ones with a lot of armor.
Protect
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[14x16] |
Use this to block all damage that you will take this turn. There is no minigame here, so use it to slow the battle down if you need to!
Heal Self
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[14x16] |
Heals your own HP. Yep, not too much going on here.
Enemy Actions:
Enemies get their own actions too! Next to their name is an indicator of what they will do on their turn:
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[8x8] |
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[8x8] |
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[8x8] |
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[8x8] |
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[7x7] |
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[7x7] |
Story
Caution! Contains sensitive subjects and mature themes!
About Development
I have worked on this game for over half a year now. Originally it was going to be a fangame where your character controlled an individual pokemon (a houndoom) trying to get a message to your destination in time. Very little of that original game stuck, except for the minigames representing moves that your character knows. Bite, Ember, Overheat, Shadow Ball were the original four moves, with a fifth for not fainting after your HP dropped to 0. Your character still retains the Blaze ability from this stage of development.
I quickly trimmed the fat off of the RPG turn based system and decided against any leveling system for such a short game. I did want companion creatures that would help you fight in Double Battles, but alas the sprite space was too limited.
At some point I wanted to make a dungeon as a good learning exercise. Inspired by Outer Wilds, I made a little story that was spread out around the dungeon area and could be discovered piece-by-piece.
While working on the encounter system I realized that the overworld enemies going to battle mode could be a unique way of handling encounters (nobody likes random Zubats Game Freak!). I experimented with how enemies see and chase the player until I found something I liked. Controlling when and who you fought became part of the puzzle.
Overall I think my first RPG game came out pretty good. Combat feels clean and snappy, and there is a tiny story to discover.
ver 1.1: Fixed a bug involving dying to the final encounter before winning.
ver 1.2: Same issue was causing a window to pop up twice.
Here is a little something I wrote because I was bored. It doesn't really have a use, you just watch a simulated user type an (almost) functional program into the Pico-8 CLI and run it.
So I wanted to recreate an old screensaver I liked to watch when I was younger. Here is a 2D Pico8 recreation of the galaxy.c screensaver written by Uli Siegmund.
For processing efficiency, each galaxy has one black hole in the center. These black holes are the only source of gravity. None of the stars affect the paths of others.
Here is a quick demo I threw together to demonstrate Proportional Navigation missiles in 2D. Generally speaking you don't want to put your players against this type of missile unless you want missiles to be very threatening (e.g. Highfleet) or you are going for something more sim-like.
Feel free to reference or use my code. I did my best to make it readable.
I'm getting back into making games after college, so this is a warm up of sorts. I revised the premise many times and unfortunately I think it shows. Nevertheless, I think some people might enjoy playing it.
Your goal is to survive to wave 10 without dying or letting your helipad get captured. Quickly tap the weapon fire button to change weapons, and hold it to release the selected weapon.
You also have a button to release flares. Use flares to trick missiles fired at you. You can also "pre-flare" by dropping flares before you are fired at. This greatly increases the chances of the enemy missile never tracking you at all.
You can land at any of the three helipads to get more weapons or flares. After each wave you can repair here as well.
Your helicopter can dive downwards faster than it can climb. You can use this to your advantage when evading fire.
The game allows a second player to control the helicopter's gun with infinite ammo, so your little brother can contribute as well.
This is an old cartridge my brother and I never quite finished because we hit the token limit. I am not very pleased about how it came out, as I don't have much skill in level design.
The name is a play on the Nighthawk, a version of the Blackhawk helicopter for the Navy. My dad flew them, so I went with that as the name.
Knighthawk's theme was inspired by a board game called Scythe. Scythe had great artwork, and I believe the game was based on the art. All the art in Scythe was painted by Jakub Rozalski. I loosely tried to follow the theme of the art. If anyone wants to know why I chose an orinthopter, it was because it seemed to fit this theme. I hadn't read the Dune books at the time, though I have started reading them last week.
About Gameplay:
The main mechanic of Knighthawk is to swap between weapons based on the situation at hand. Use X to do this.
Each weapon has strengths and weaknesses. No enemies have resistance or vulnerability to a certain type.
The boss at the end is a bit tough, and will follow you around to a certain extent. This boss really doesn't fit the rest of the game's theme, but was an attempt to make the player face a smarter enemy rather than a bigger one.
If you just want to goof around I left the invulnerability toggle in the pause menu.
My attempt at recreating a Battlezone(ish) game. Battlezone has always been one of my favorite games. If someone wants to do the sound effects that would be great. I just am terrible at that kind of thing, so I didn't want to butcher it.
Drive the most advanced and realistic tank simulator since the bulldozer. Hide behind various (two) creatively designed geometric shapes on the battlefield and battle numerous (three) types of enemies. Wonder why the lava on the volcano is green.
Controls:
- Arrow keys to drive tank or select menu option
- X key to fire
- Z key to select on menu
Optional: - Tab button to change to third person view
- P2 left and right to turn turret
- P2 Down to fire
- P2 Up to turn tank body toward turret
P.S. You can swap the colors to the Gameboy color scheme from the menu.
Thanks to jdan for the demo I adapted to make this: https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=4126
Also the font is Pineapple's from: https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2783
And my brother Phin for some of the art.
Changelog version 1.1 (3 years later):
Added SFX
Fixed Radar display
Adjusted title screen font
Increased player speed
Old cart version:
