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Storm the Castle... Retro Style!
Waxius- 04/08/2018 07:33 PM
- 1499 views
Dumb Castle by Marrend
Dumb Castle is terribad! Not terrible... but terriBAD! Made for the RetroMania event in 2017, this game brings forth the WORST traits of gaming from the 1980's era platformers. It is INTENTIONALLY bad, complete with the horrible english translations that we would have seen from crappy NES games. The only problem is... it's STILL better than some of those games despite it's length, lack of title screen, and game play issues.
Story:
There is no story, not even on the RMN game page. You are the hero, go kill the bad guy, that's your story.
Game Play:
The game play is a bit interesting. You're climbing up a castle tower, there are ledges and ladders everywhere. Some of these ledges are occupied by goblins or bats, and you can shoot them with the X Key (action button). If there is a small enough gap between two ledges (1 block width), you can jump over it to the other ledge.
Along the way, you rack up points by collecting bags of gold and killing enemies. However, the game is super short as there are only 3 screens to play. The third screen has the big boss who taunts you the moment you walk in.
Game Issues:
Now let's talk about how bad this game actually is! I have to assume that everything bad about this game is intentional, because we all know that the developer Marrend is a talented, and highly competent programmer and story teller. I also have some thoughts on what could make this game worse.
1. There's no need to worry about moving targets, because when you are firing, all movement stops, including yours. You have to wait for the projectile to hit the end of the screen or the target itself to begin moving again.
2. Jumping on an enemy doesn't kill the enemy or hurt you.
3. The screen parameters "Hits:" and "Points:" can be confusing. Hits refers to your remaining health, rather than how many kills you've made. I kept killing enemies and saw points increase but not hits. I had the aha moment when I wanted to let enemies kill me, and I saw the hits number start going down. Also, once you have 10 points, it resets to 0 and you gain a Hit.
4. The music is probably too high quality for this game. I think a fully realized retro experience would need an annoying as hell NES style chiptune!
5. There's no way to actually kill the boss directly, instead you have to pull switches, which defeats him in some unknown way.
Other Thoughts:
If we REALLY wanted to make this game hard and annoying, allow the players the jump with the Z key instead of automatically crossing small gaps. If they don't land on a ledge, instant death. Or if they walk off the ledge, instant death. Add spike traps and fire traps and you've got the potential for a challenging platformer. For now... I'll let the Villain share my sentiments:
Dumb Castle is terribad! Not terrible... but terriBAD! Made for the RetroMania event in 2017, this game brings forth the WORST traits of gaming from the 1980's era platformers. It is INTENTIONALLY bad, complete with the horrible english translations that we would have seen from crappy NES games. The only problem is... it's STILL better than some of those games despite it's length, lack of title screen, and game play issues.
Story:
There is no story, not even on the RMN game page. You are the hero, go kill the bad guy, that's your story.
Game Play:
The game play is a bit interesting. You're climbing up a castle tower, there are ledges and ladders everywhere. Some of these ledges are occupied by goblins or bats, and you can shoot them with the X Key (action button). If there is a small enough gap between two ledges (1 block width), you can jump over it to the other ledge.
Along the way, you rack up points by collecting bags of gold and killing enemies. However, the game is super short as there are only 3 screens to play. The third screen has the big boss who taunts you the moment you walk in.
Game Issues:
Now let's talk about how bad this game actually is! I have to assume that everything bad about this game is intentional, because we all know that the developer Marrend is a talented, and highly competent programmer and story teller. I also have some thoughts on what could make this game worse.
1. There's no need to worry about moving targets, because when you are firing, all movement stops, including yours. You have to wait for the projectile to hit the end of the screen or the target itself to begin moving again.
2. Jumping on an enemy doesn't kill the enemy or hurt you.
3. The screen parameters "Hits:" and "Points:" can be confusing. Hits refers to your remaining health, rather than how many kills you've made. I kept killing enemies and saw points increase but not hits. I had the aha moment when I wanted to let enemies kill me, and I saw the hits number start going down. Also, once you have 10 points, it resets to 0 and you gain a Hit.
4. The music is probably too high quality for this game. I think a fully realized retro experience would need an annoying as hell NES style chiptune!
5. There's no way to actually kill the boss directly, instead you have to pull switches, which defeats him in some unknown way.
Other Thoughts:
If we REALLY wanted to make this game hard and annoying, allow the players the jump with the Z key instead of automatically crossing small gaps. If they don't land on a ledge, instant death. Or if they walk off the ledge, instant death. Add spike traps and fire traps and you've got the potential for a challenging platformer. For now... I'll let the Villain share my sentiments:
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CloseThanks for giving this craptastrophe game a go! A few comments, if I may.
I know I froze player movement when firing (as that processing/code was pulled from this game) but, enemies should still be able to move? I'll grant that a lot of enemy movement is on the slow side, though.
I believe the bug regarding jumping on enemies probably has to do with the fact that said movement is event-based rather than player input. The activation trigger of enemies is "Player Touch". I did a quick test-run with the trigger being "Event Touch", which had no effect on players jumping on the enemies. However, there was something else I noticed during that test-run...
With the "Player Touch" trigger, enemies do not activate their damage event if they attempt to move into the tile where the player is. Their movement stops, as it should, but, they just stand there like idiots. If the player happens to be facing the enemy, they can just blast 'em without consequences.
The gargoyle enemy that the boss spawns also has it's damage trigger activated on Player Touch, but, I also note that it "flies" (ie: has the "through" flag enabled). I didn't playtest to see what, exactly, happens if the player allows the gargoyle to move towards them, but, my guess is that the event would be able to occupy the same space as the player, and would be able to activate the trigger.
I think I originally had the term "Lives" instead of "Hits". That term didn't feel right at all, though, since the character isn't really dying as she gets hit. Like, in the original Dark Castle, running into enemies would absolutely mean player death. That would decrement the "Lives" counter, and reset the screen. Unless there were no lives left, in which case, GAME OVER, back to the title screen. Falling into pits meant going into the "Trouble" zone, which was basically the castle's dungeon. Anyway, back to the main point, I suppose the less confusing term here would have been "Health". With how it's used in this game, it's borrowing a page/concept from Beyond Dark Castle more than Dark Castle.
*Edit:
Daaaawwww!
I know I froze player movement when firing (as that processing/code was pulled from this game) but, enemies should still be able to move? I'll grant that a lot of enemy movement is on the slow side, though.
I believe the bug regarding jumping on enemies probably has to do with the fact that said movement is event-based rather than player input. The activation trigger of enemies is "Player Touch". I did a quick test-run with the trigger being "Event Touch", which had no effect on players jumping on the enemies. However, there was something else I noticed during that test-run...
With the "Player Touch" trigger, enemies do not activate their damage event if they attempt to move into the tile where the player is. Their movement stops, as it should, but, they just stand there like idiots. If the player happens to be facing the enemy, they can just blast 'em without consequences.
The gargoyle enemy that the boss spawns also has it's damage trigger activated on Player Touch, but, I also note that it "flies" (ie: has the "through" flag enabled). I didn't playtest to see what, exactly, happens if the player allows the gargoyle to move towards them, but, my guess is that the event would be able to occupy the same space as the player, and would be able to activate the trigger.
I think I originally had the term "Lives" instead of "Hits". That term didn't feel right at all, though, since the character isn't really dying as she gets hit. Like, in the original Dark Castle, running into enemies would absolutely mean player death. That would decrement the "Lives" counter, and reset the screen. Unless there were no lives left, in which case, GAME OVER, back to the title screen. Falling into pits meant going into the "Trouble" zone, which was basically the castle's dungeon. Anyway, back to the main point, I suppose the less confusing term here would have been "Health". With how it's used in this game, it's borrowing a page/concept from Beyond Dark Castle more than Dark Castle.
*Edit:
...we all know that the developer Marrend is a talented, and highly competent programmer and story teller.
Daaaawwww!
Pages:
1
