Unsafe at Home: A 64x64 baseball bullet hell time wasting experience!
In the distant future, Blaseball is the only remaining sport, as foretold by prophecy. One day, two friends run across an ancient document: the official Major League Baseball rulebook. However, it is badly damaged and the two are left to interpret the rules for themselves. Here is what these two friends from the future think baseball used to be.
- One player, the pitcher, attempts to hit the other player, the hitter, with baseballs. The book clearly says hitter, not hittee, which would make more sense, but these were ancient humans, so . . .
- The hitter attempts to circle the bases counterclockwise as many times as he can without getting hit. Each time he does this, he scores a run. He must stay in the baseline at all times. He can circle the bases clockwise, but will not score runs in that direction, and in fact must recircle ALL the bases he circled clockwise in the correct direction before he is awarded a run for crossing "home", which is what people called fourth base in those days.
- When the hitter scores 5 runs without having a bat, he gets a bat. The bat is used to hit home runs (maybe tihs is why he's called "hitter" and not "hittee"? The text is ambiguous). A home run clears all the balls from the field, but is obviously not worth any runs - that would be nonsense.
- If the hitter chooses NOT to use the bat, he gets an extra run for every run he accumulates after getting the bat until he chooses to use the bat.
- When the pitcher hits the hitter, that is called an inning (because the ball runs INto the hitter). The baseballs they found with the rulebook are all very old and immediately disintegrate when they run into the hitter. The game ends after 9 innings.
- The pitcher throws a ball at the hitter once at the start of the game, once for every run the hitter scores, once after a home run, and once when he scores an inning. Every 5 runs the hitter scores, the pitcher starts throwing a little harder.
GOAL
Score as many runs as you can before the end of the 9th inning. My personal best is 21, I'd love to see how you do!
CONTROLS
- Any key to start the game from the title screen.
- Up arrow to run counterclockwise, down arrow to run clockwise. You only score runs running the bases in the correct (counterclockwise) direction, but running backwards is key to avoid getting hit sometimes!
- X or Z to hit a home run when you have the bat!
- X or Z to restart when the game ends.
CREDITS
I'm responsible for all the code, music arrangement & mediocre pixel art, such as it is. The concept came to me when I was watching an actual baseball game and saw the baserunner get hit during a rundown. It's 64x64 because it's harder and more chaotic that way :).
The music for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was composed in 1908 by Albert Von Tilzer, 20 years before he ever saw a baseball game. I think I took a few liberties with some notes here and there, but it's mostly faithful to the original.
Saw this while scrolling through #pico8 on Twitter the other day, and was confused by the resolution. Thought it must be cropped and zoomed. Now I see that it's actually 64x64. Nice.
Fun, silly concept. It works.
I appreciate all the color commentary in the description. Really fits with the game. But when I first skimmed over it, I didn't actually read it, and thought the game must have complicated rules that I was too tired to bother with. I clicked Play anyway, to see the 64x64 graphics, and quickly saw the controls and game were pretty simple. Just an FYI, in case anyone else is skipping the game for the same reason.
@Martoon Thank you for playing! And yes, I tend to get carried away making up elaborate nonsensical stories for games that maybe don't need them :).
Oh, I think the elaborate story is hilarious, and I wouldn't omit that! But when you skim it, it looks like one of those board games your friend talks you into that takes two hours to learn how to play.
It's a fun game that's different from anything else I've played, and I'd hate to see people skip it if they misread like I did. Maybe if the tldr info (GOAL and CONTROLS) were at the top, and the rest below that?
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk on SEO and incremental consumer engagement.
ah, only found two blaseball fans on here so far, neat
i'm guessing the teams for the friends are...
shoe thieves and maaaaybe garages?
[Please log in to post a comment]
