Hi,
This is Helitaxi 2000
By the year 2000 (the far future) the surface Earth is doomed, ruined by atomic wars fought between evil corporations. The survivors live in huge caves underground and for transport, they use armored helicopters, because that makes complete sense in a cave.
You are one of the pilots, trying to make a living by taxiing people in the hostile environment.
This game is a mix between Space taxi and Airwolf. At least thats the aim, but right now it is mostly like Space taxi - there are no enemies on the level, just environmental hazards. I run into code size limitations, and didn't wanted to go over the whole thing and shorten the function/variable names... (Actually there is a lot of unused code in it, but I wanted to use those later by yet-unwritten code parts...)
I originally wanted to wait for pico-8 v0.1.1 to raise the code size limitations somewhat to finish the cart, but I'm not sure when I will have time to actually work on it again, so I just post it here as it is.
There are a couple of bugs (like stucking in the walls, or not ending the game when the fuel runs out), but it is quite playable anyway.
There is only one level, and no real end goal yet, but you can play it just for the highscore.
Who could make the most money? :)
I like this a lot.
It reminds of of the old Dos game Jetpack.
I don't know what Space Taxi or Airwolf are but this game is really nice!
I'm taking a look at your code now! :)
Thank you! :)
Space taxi and Airwolf are classic games from the C64 (but I guess they were probably released on DOS too). They were amongst my favorites on the C64, and this game is made for #1GAM, where the theme was "childhood" :)
I don't know how much sense my code makes, but you are welcome to check out. :)
I just loaded it in pico-8 v0.1.1 and it is just around 4800 tokens out of 8192, so there is plenty of space left now (as compared to v.0.1, where it was right at the limit).
So this is good news, now I only have to find some free time to work on it some more... :-/
I think the scrolling should show more of what's ahead of the player.
Lovely looking game.
Reminds me of some NES era HElicopter games I've played.
Control wise using the X button for turning and maybe hovering might help control wise a bit.
Love the title screen with that moving background and helicopter blade like effect.
First off, incredible title screen theme.
Apart from that, all I can say is that this is a gem of a little game. The constant loop of picking up passengers, bringing them to their destination to earn money, crashing into things, spending money on healing, expending fuel over time, spending money on refueling...
it's really sophisticated, and has enough elements in it to keep you satisfied inside that loop. The feel and style is great, the whimsical 8x8 pixels helicopters flying sfx in stark contrast to the cheesy serious title screen. What can I say, it's a gem.
It says a lot for this game that I'm still playing it even when I keep dying and complaining about the bugs. That long brick wall between the fuel depot and the repair station is my nemesis. It just requires too many damn missiles and they're so hard to aim that by trying to aim at the wall I just crash into it. This game is way too hard.
SO WHY DO I STILL WANT TO PLAY IT?
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