Update 020322
- Previously, extra lives were given at 200/400/600/800/1000 points. Now the first extra life is given at 300, and then every 400 points with no upper limit. The player can keep up to 8 lives.
- Cutscene intervals are extended, appearing at every 1000 pts.
- High score cap is removed.
- And while at it, a little more embellishment on the title screen.
I wanted to go to bed, but somehow my brain thought of this change, and I couldn't fall asleep without letting this out of my system by implementing it.
Update 022020
- Slight revision to the text to tie in with its plot sequel Bomba Cum Laude.
- Minor retouching on portraits. Also, the white bomber had to go as Hudson references got removed.
- The basket will move faster at later levels.
- The next bomb will not be more than 48 pixels horizontally apart from the pervious one.
About
This is a Kaboom! clone with anime girls that nobody asked for. I started this as a side project while I was stuck with different phases of building Miromina. This was built upon an exercise I made from the Nerdy Teachers' tutorial game Fruit Drop.
The player begins with three lives, which are represented with the three baskets and it just stacks up if they can earn extra lives. All baskets have collision, so it's possible to sweep across the screen and catch bombs from either side of the basket stack, and that's the intended design. The bombs will be clustered around the center in the early levels, but they'll get more randomly scattered and faster. When the player loses a life by missing a bomb, the game will clear the current bombs and start a new wave with the randomness and speed scaled back a little. Extra lives are given at fixed score points.
At first I wasn't really sure if I wanted to publish it since it is a beginner exercise staple after all and you've all seen different interpretations of the Kaboom! formula, so to give more of a character to this cart, I added a story progression featuring pixellated anime girls. The cutscenes will appear at the beginning of the game and as the player reaches 500, 1000 and 1500 points, and after each cutscene the girl who appears on the top right will change.
The original plan was to make the girl move and drop bombs like the mad bomber in Kaboom!, but despite my best efforts I couldn't make it in 32x32, so I just decided to keep them stationary so they don't look like they have missing body parts when moving at least. While not intentional, it turned out not to be too bad since I can then spawn bombs from y=0 and that gives 32 more frames for the player to react to new bombs.
Note to self: Next time, create a function like
text(scene, page, box)
so that you don't have to hard-code every piece of dialogue, and maybe it could take an argument if it needs to draw the dialogue box or not.
In some cases it is absolutely impossible to catch a bomb, @katiusza, because it is too far away, even if you can wrap around the other side of the screen.
@dw817 Should I rather send the player back to the title screen after the last cutscene? Because I don't see this game to be something that needs to be played forever.
As mentioned in the OP, I can't imagine neither myself nor anyone else wanting to play a random Kaboom clone to get high scores. I can see how the forced game over can feel unfair, I'll think about how to tweak around.
Also, I must say a secret code is a terrible idea. If any unlockables exist it should be in the plain sight.
It wouldn't be random, it would follow a particular pattern, @katiusza. However, that's fine. I just had a few ideas I thought would help. Cool-down being one of them.
@dw817 Updated to limit the next bomb to be no more than 48 pixels horizontally apart from the previous one. Since the drop speed will continuously increase it will eventually result in game over, but I hope it'd make it feel less unfair as the player isn't asked to go from one end to the other without a paddle controller
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