Sample

The starting area of Sample

The game is well-named. It is basically a final lesson in combining all of the elements you’ve learned in the tutorials into a functional game. And indeed, it’s a simple game; it all takes place on a single map, and its elements don’t really cohere all that well — and yet it’s fascinating and evocative, and its influence on end-user games approaches infinite.

Sample is an attempt at an action-adventure exploration game, using a two-block-tall character. The effort is hampered by an awkward sense of perspective and the inability in Game-Maker to set foreground objects, for the character to walk behind. So when you walk into, say, the top of a tree or the top of your house, you bang your shins on it instead of just walking past, partially obscured from the camera.

And yet the sense of space, and the use of space, are both charming and clever. Within that one map you will find several mazes, swamps, forests, traps, gardens, and a sort of a village. For such a small area, there seems no end of surprises to find or new areas to lurk around in. And as the game takes place all on one map, there’s never any loading. It’s all one seamless adventure — and one that may take a while to complete.

It is significant that the background tiles pop up again, in some form, in nearly every Game-Maker game made. Furthermore, find me a game with a two-block-tale male protagonist, and I’ll find you a sprite edit of our protagonist here.

Story

There is no need to study or sweat through school if you can only pick up the 'book of knowledge. But finding it is a bit of a problem. There is only one way through the maze, and a variety of monsters are moving about.

Instructions

The SAMPLE game shows many of Game-Maker's features. A two block high character walks in four directions, shoots, drops bombs, picks up items, gets hurt, and dies.

Arrow keys move the character, as does a joystick. On the numeric keyboard, keys 2, 4, 6, and 8 act as arrow keys.

In order to shoot the laser, you need to first pick it up. In order to shoot the revolver, you need to pick it and its ammo up. You start with five bombs, and can pick up others.

The space bar shoots four laser monsters away from the character. The 'b' key sets down bombs which explode. Key 5 shoots bullets. On the numeric keypad, the 1, 3, 7, and 9 keys shoot single lasers various ways.

The character starts with 250 hit points and 3 lives. The objective is to pick up the Book of Wisdom. To do this, you must eat enough hamburgers to get strength, find two keys, and fight through the maze -- and you are going to need a sword.

Monsters subtract hit points, food adds hit points. Most monsters can be killed, but some are too strong to be killed by a laser.

Downloads

• Sample