Topo Falso

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 16:59:54 UTC

Topo Falso

by RalphEgas

[Click to Play]

-= Topo Falso =-

Originally inspired by "Topo Europe" from Radarsoft, back in the 80's, I present you "Topo Falso", a fake topography learning experience! Navigate your chopper to your targets and earn points. Learning topography has never been this fun even tough it will render completely useless otherwise! With 12 fake province capitals, 23 fake cities and 75 fake villages to memorise, there's plenty challenge available in this game!

Controls:
In menu
Up and Down to navigate
X to select the highlighted option

In game
Left, Right, Up and Down to navigate your chopper
O to go back to the menu

Features:

Learn how to learn topography!
The actual topography is 100% guaranteed to be utter useless!
2 continents worth exploring and memorising!
3 Game modes, and a separate Remix mode
An extra Free Roaming mode to help you study at your own pace!
Powerups and portals frequently spawn to get you to your targets faster!
A mini-map to help you relate places and overal shape!
Aggressive random-warping cyclones to avoid!
Fantasty RPG-like city and village names!
A Fantasy RPG-like island shape not unlike New Zeeland, but not quite!
Get a time bonus when you find 10 places in a row!
Navigate a chopper! I mean, who doesn't want that, right?
Catchy single-channel yet uplifting chip-tunes!
An old-school marquee providing hints and personal background info tid bits of the creator!

Background:
This is my second PICO-8 game and it seems I've been able to keep a promise I made to myself: create and publish a new PICO-8 game every month. This time it took me only a week from scratch while I was (and still am) enjoying time off with my family in Tuscany under a very hot sun on a well deserved vacation! I took inspiration from Topo Europe (and other spin-offs) from Radarsoft from back in the 80's. I always thought that their approach was very apt for learning topography and it beats me why modern topography games are nothing more than multiple-choice quizes. So boring! Of course, this particular incarnation is useless if you wanna learn actual topography as I actually put some effort in having city and village names generated for a fantasy land, but I guess the method is the one thing that counts! ;) Anyway, enjoy!

Cosmic Cab 1.0

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 11:33:27 UTC

Cosmic Cab

by RalphEgas

[Click to Play]

[UPDATE 1.0]
Embedded new sprite sheet as provided by @ghostneedle to improve platform color coding.

A brand new take pure arcade take on Space Taxi from Muse in 1984!

Start a new cab business and master gravitational physics and expert timing to navigate your cosmic cab to pickup and drop off travelling folk who are of course always in a hurry! Naturally you'll be competing with a privatised public transport service that won't hesitate to nick your customers right in front of you! Also, don't forget to get fuel before you run out, but watch out for gravity defying rolling fuel barrels getting in your way! How long will you last and how much value will you gain for your enterprise?

Controls:

Left, Right and Up to thrust in the corresponding direction while airborne
Up to retract landing gear and get airborne from a platform
Down to toggle landing gear while airborne
Left and Right to select avatar upon receiving a new high score
X + O pressed simultaneously to confirm

Features:

4 Different level types from easy to insanely tough navigation!
A great feel of control and sense of accomplishment once you get the hang of it!
After every 4 levels it gets significantly more challenging!
Split second decisions making for coping with dilemmas built-in!
Pick an avatar for your high scores!
Not Game Over but Bankruptcy is what you need to avoid!
Losing a cab will progressively double the insurance premium!
You’ll get a bonus company value increase on level completion!
Green floating indicators increase the change of critical tipping!
Either thrust or use your landing gear, not both at the same time!
Clients appear and vanish through super cool and animated portals!
Color coded platforms for instant understanding of your flight path!
Super cool thrust effects and dynamic color conform landing dust
Explosive crashes!
Dust falling of moving level gates!
In other words: overzealous polish!
Cart is close to full capacity of code tokens and close to 100% compressed data size after major optimisations

Background:

I've spent roughly 35 years conceptualising games and implementing video game technology and although I have tried before, I had actually never completed a full game until now. The way PICO-8 works and mostly due to its intentional limitations, and also because of a planned surgery that had me forced to take some time off from my company, I've finally crossed that bridge and this is the result: my first game is done and that's one item off my bucket list. Time for me to move on to my second! Anyway, I hope you enjoy! ;)

RalphEgas [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Topo Falso

Cosmic Cab 1.0