8-bit style, old-school adventure game released for Linux, Mac and Windows | Hacker News Reader

8-bit style, old-school adventure game released for Linux, Mac and Windows

lunduke.com

61 pointsBryanLunduke25 comments

That ain't 8-bit. That's just crappy graphics ala 1995 Mac OS Classic games. Looks alot like the old shareware Escape Velocity games.

I wasn't going to nitpick but yeah.

This is an adventure game running on an 8-bit computer (Apple II): http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/42948-king-s-quest-a...

Exactly. The labeling of anything with low resolution sprites/graphics as 8-bit drives me up the wall. The atari 2600 was 8-bit. The NES, 8-bit. They have very different aesthetics. "Low resolution" (lo-rez if you're nasty) would be a much better term as it doesn't tie the graphics to any type of hardware.

The screenshot do look a tiny bit like EV, though it's hard to tell. But apart from that, it seems totally different, what with being (ostensibly) a point-and-click adventure.

Incidently, if anyone has a hankering for something like Escape Velocity, which ranks up there as one of my favorite games of all time, I've wasted the entire last weekend playing Space, Pirates and Zombies, which is similar to EV. Still not as good (in terms of setting and overall gameplay; the combat mechanics are far better) but the closest I have been able to find in, what, 10 years now?

It is '8-bit style'

No, it _isn't_. It has many things that NO 8-bit system was capable of, like smooth gradients in multiple colors, and rotated sprites.

16-bit I'd maybe grant you, but no way is it 8-bit.

I think we should beWhat about it is 8-bit style? What is 8-bit style?

If it means that it resembles games on 8-bit computers or game consoles, then no, it doesn't really look like 8-bit style. It looks more like early 1990s computer gaming, when things were fully 32-bit all around if you had to reduce it to those terms.

Disappointing. I thought it was going to be a text adventure game, real old school. Instead it was one of those new-fangled graphics adventures. Bah!

Those are still getting made as well: http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=rcu&newSortBy.x=0&...

Interestingly, the IF scene is some ten years older than the current indie game boom, and they're pretty much entirely non-commercial. There are some serious quality games there for free.

The graphics reminds me a lot of Star Control (I and II). Which is one of the best games ever created.

Here is the UrQuan Masters (the open source version of it): http://sc2.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php

If its a simple enough game, why not program it to work in the browser! It would have been a big plus if you want to target as many platforms as possible, and you could probably get a larger crowd to play it if they were able to play part of it online before purchasing.

As of right now we don't have any semblance of what the game is like, and even 8bit games had demos and shareware versions.

Shameless preview: I'm developing my own set of HTML5 Canvas games that I plan to open source to that others can have some good examples and tutorials to start making their own cross-platform browser games.

The first one so far: http://cloudstork.com/temp/game.html

(Warning: very unfinished means some ugly art.) That's a full playable level, though it wont work well on mobile devices just yet.

I have tried some html5 game making myself, and I must say that although it looks promising, at the moment it's still a lot easier to make the equivalent game in flash (and there is no reason why a game like that can't be made in flash).

Congratulations.

I'm working on something similiar (ok, the biggest similiarity is in graphics - my game will be more like 2d sf action rpg with asteroid mechanics :)), and I'm very interested, if there's market for such games.

If you could publish your experiences, I'd be grateful.

EDIT: here's alpha version of my game. Most thigs don't work, and bugs abound, so beware :)

Should work on modern browsers (capable of webgl, or at least canvas).

http://alan.umcs.lublin.pl/~ajuc/tiled_arcade_webgl/current/

I like how you're using standard HTML elements for the important bits outside of the game's main display. That is a great idea and seems like an efficient way (in terms of level of effort, not reinventing the wheel) to build a UI and tools for a game like this.

It's also making canvas window smaller, so it runs faster :)

At least when it's using canvas software renderer, 20% of screen size is making a big difference in fps (on my old PC 30 versus 37 fps).

But it would be worth it just for much simpler ui programming.

And not just simpler, but way simpler, and way easier to get nice results. Think of all the stuff you get "for free" by using HTML in a modern browser. You'd have to write all this stuff by hand or lean on a game library to implement: text input, input focus, buttons, UI events, styled text (bold, italic, etc.), text shadows, box shadows, skinned UI (CSS).

In fact, I bet big name games will increasingly embed things like WebKit and use HTML5 and CSS for their UIs in the future.

stationEry. it's "E for Envelopes" (stationAry means not moving - it's an Adjective).

Also, .34 dwarf fortress is out today.

Buyed it.

No sound. The screenshots are original size. Apart from that, great humor.

It's a nice little Point & Click. For a little less than 4 Euros, why not?

Oh right, I remember adventure games. Ten minutes in I've clicked every dialog tree and tried every button on every visible object, and nothing seems to indicate what to do next. If I click every possible combination I might eventually find the right thing that unlocks the next part of the story.

This is fun because...?

I'm liking the minor revival of the 80s-style graphic adventure genre, with new twists. I also enjoyed this game-poem-like one that came in 2010 (also cross-platform): http://cardboardcomputer.com/games/a-house-in-california/

I really enjoyed playing that game as well.

On a side note, games likes these convince me that video games have the potential to transcend into art, but that it's maybe not a good fit to actually call them video games, as the game mechanic plays a minor role in relation to the content.

If a game like A House in California wouldn't require a computer to be played, but rather interacting with physical objects instead, it would be called an art installation.

Just a thought. And it's off-topic really. Just wanted to share.

so.. why is an unplayed/unreviewed/undocumented game on here? is there something special about it?

It was released Today.

No demo?

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