Controls:
⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ Change lanes
⭕️ [Z] Accelerator
Gameplay:
Two cars continuously drive forward through rectangular channels in a simple maze. At the four cardinal directions are gaps where a car can change lanes. The player goal is to collect all dots in the maze while avoiding collisions with the computer-controlled car that is travelling in the opposite direction.
At higher levels of difficulty you'll face more opponent cars (max 3). Every 6 levels it goes back to one opponent car but it's faster!
Remake:
This is a Pico-8 demake of "Head On" (1979 by Sega/Gremlin), the first game introducing the "collect dots in maze" idea. You can tell where Pac-Man took the inspiration from.
The game was hard, yes (I hated it actually lol). So in this version you don't race for points and have to redo every time from level 1 at game over, you just try on and on a certain difficulty level attempting to find the right approach.
Strategy:
Despite its looks (racing game?) it is mainly a strategy and logic game, it could even be defined as a puzzle game, still requiring a bit of timing and reflexes.
The opponent AI might seems implacable and infallible, there is in fact no handicap or random behaviour: use this at your advantage, it means their moves are predictable, so you basically control them!
Link on Itchio:
https://heracleum.itch.io/head-8n
Another advantage you have vs AI is opponent cars can switch one lane only while you can change TWO lanes (of course you need to release the accelerator).
woah, it's got the old feels that most pico-8 games don't have, that's so cool. reminds me of new rally x.
That is 1. a surprisingly fun game design, and 2. a really well made version. Feels great to play. Also those graphics are amazing.
Yeah the original game concept was absolutely brilliant in its simplicity... What ruined the enjoyment a bit was the coin-eating component and how brutally fast the action was; I tried to tone it down (but yeah still quite challenging indeed 😅).
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