Pico8 implementation of the boardgame "Shōbu" by Manolis Vranas and Jamie Sajdak.
OVERVIEW
In Shōbu, the play area is divided into four boards. The goal of the game is to push all of your opponent's pieces off of any one of the four boards.
The two boards on your side of the play area are known as your HOME BOARDS.
YOUR TURN
On your turn, you must make two moves: first, a PASSIVE move, and then an ACTIVE move.
PASSIVE MOVE
For your PASSIVE move, you may only select a piece from one of your HOME BOARDS.
- You may move this piece up to 2 spaces in any direction.
- During your PASSIVE move, you may NOT push any other pieces.
ACTIVE MOVE
For your ACTIVE move, you must repeat your PASSIVE move with one of your pieces on an OPPOSITE-COLORED board.
- During your ACTIVE move, you MAY push your opponent's pieces.
- Pieces pushed off of the board are lost forever.
PAUSE MENU OPTIONS
- UNDO: Use the Undo menu to undo mistakes, or play the game backward or forward in its entirety.
- TOGGLE LABELS: Show row/column labels for aiding in asynchronous play
- INSTRUCTIONS: Full instructions with visual examples are included in the pause menu.
- THEMES: Choose from a variety of visual themes for the board and pieces -- or build your own!
- FORFEIT: Give up the current game.
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LITTLE SPACE RANGERS
Journey across the stars, crashing your Star Cruiser into a series of increasingly dangerous, procedurally generated planets. Explore their hazardous surfaces as you rescue your stranded crew, salvage lost cargo, and zap hordes of enemies. Can you survive long enough to reach the Mysterious Planet X? Or will you be consumed by a slime, zapped by an enemy blaster, boiled in acid, or choked to death by a toxic atmosphere?
CONTROLS
Arrow Keys/Directional Pad - Move
[Z] - Jump (tap, or hold for higher jumps)
[X] - Use Held Item
[Down] + [X] - Pick up / Swap Item
SCORE
There are several ways to earn score as you traverse a planet's surface:
Bopping enemies
Zapping enemies
Securing cargo
Transporting friendly crew off the surface
Completing levels
Blasting off from the planet in a new Star Cruiser
Several secret bonuses you'll need to discover!
PLANETS
As you delve deeper into space, the planets will expand in size, add more difficult room layouts and variations, increase the chance for high gravity, unlock new hazardous biomes (including burning lava planets, sliding ice planets, and rare toxic atmospheres!), more challenging enemy variants, more enemy crew, and fewer useful items to help you along the way. While the first few planets might not cause you much trouble, by the time you reach the Mysterious Planet X, you'll need the skills and bravery of a true Space Ranger to survive!
SPECIES
Humans are boring! While they're the most common species in the Space Rangers, the other sentient species have special bonuses to help in their adventures. Along with all the random features of each planet, you'll need to accustom yourself to the unique ability of your randomly chosen cadet.
Can you reach the Mysterious Planet X with a cadet from every species?
CREDITS
Game by @tmi_robot. For developer logs and other information, search #littlespacerangers on Twitter.
Uses portions of @matthughson's Advanced Micro Platformer library, which can be found here https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=46229.​
CHANGE LOG
---------------- v1.3 ----------------
--- GAMEPLAY ---
o Lowered the number of screens per planet, and randomized the chance of extra screens on later planets instead of always having them be bigger, which:
1) makes the game easier
2) varies up the landscape more frequently
3) presents the player with a win feeling more often, making the game more fun overall.
o Removed the increase in enemy hit points on later planets, as, with no visual indicator, it's confusing and not fun to discover deep into a run.
o Removed the need to press up to enter the ship, removing the need to learn another action
o Fixed a bug where your high score wouldn't be updated when you win the game
o Changed screen clear score to take into account planet difficulty
o Changed score to not be stored as decimals, as score should never get close to 32k and conversion used tokens. Forced new save version to _13, to clear old scores as this and gameplay changes make old scores meaningless.
--- VISUALS ---
o Adjusted the HUD window size so that the full vertical play area can be seen properly
o Added a HUD prompt when near an item, instructing the player on how to pick it up
o Adjusted the title screen to be centered better, shifting all status displays a little higher
o Added random flavor text dialog strings to the crash sequence
o Added flavor text dialog strings that describe the overall difficulty of a planet upon landing
o Added ability to specify a blood color for death particles (robots no longer bleed!)
o Renamed the "talk-o-tron" to "tele-tron", to better match its concept
--- AUDIO ---
o Added a sound effect when entering the ship at the end of a planet
o Added a sound effect for the Planet: Cleared banner
--- CODE ---
o Updated the include pico-8 package to v0.2.0i (netting some free tokens!)
o Added back in code comments I had to remove a long time ago for .png format space and reorganized code for better readability
o Recaptured a bunch of tokens through various methods (multiple if chains converted to "if ands", some ifs that weren’t necessary (nil checks when nil is ok), a few missed multiple assignment lines, a few unnecessary assignments in reset() and other functions, a few never-used code paths (extensibility that was never used or generic functions that are only called in one place), and other assorted cleanups.
