Zark

Zark

Release type: Demo game
Release date: 1994 (original release)
Levels: 4
Author: A-J Games
Related games: The Patchwork Heart

Whereas Glubada Pond gets caught up in mechanics, and Crullo gets caught up in the design tools, Zark gets caught up in genre. After Crullo, I chose to stretch Game-Maker's boundaries again. Game-Maker really wasn’t made for shooters, especially scrolling space shooters, but that never stopped anyone.

I had some earlier experience, so knew what absolutely didn’t work; it just wasn’t sure what did. One way to create a constant scroll was to ensure that the player’s ship always moved right. Even when backing up, it would move at a lower speed than when moving forward. Since under this scheme it does little good to prevent scrolling back to the left, I let the player flit around and explore at will.

A prickly predicament in Zark

Weapon pick-ups are another problem. With Game-Maker you can’t just exchange one weapon type for another on the fly; you can only upgrade from one to the next. That is, if you load all the weapons onto the same key — which is the standard. So instead, Zark uses a numbered system. Each number represents the number of shots the ship will emit at a time. They spread in various directions and patterns, depending on the number. This works out well, except in that fast-moving monsters tend to skip across the screen rather than moving smoothly. Any shots are classified as monsters. Thus, any fast-moving shots have a good chance of skipping past a target even if you shoot it head-on.

This may be the first time that I experimented with large, multi-block monsters. When the player destroys a weak point, it unleashes a high-power “explosion” monster that swirls around and destroys all the other boss parts, which will themselves unleash swirling explosion monsters.

It works pretty well, if you ignore the odd engine bug that may randomly cause an explosion to spawn a boss segment. Not sure why that happens.

Some of the menus were created or altered by Gregory Stone.

- EJR Tairne

Story

Level 1 of Zark

An evil race from Alpha Centurai is approaching your base on Venus. The stupid planet just got terraformed, and now an alien race is coming to demolish it. Great, just great.

Wanna hear more? You've been chosen as an ambassador. Ambassador? What the heck do they think they're doing? These alien things are coming with guns and who knows what else to destroy the place. Ambassador? More like a blimmin' leader of a suicide trek into the enemy filled void. Space is dangerous 'nough without any aliens!

Well, you take the most powerful ship on Venus and prepare for trouble.....

Instructions

Level 2 of Zark

       NUMERICAL KEYPAD     
 
              Up
              |
        |---|---|---|
Up-left-| 7 | 8 | 9 |-Up-right
        |___|___|___|
        |---|   |---|
   Left-| 4 |   | 6 |-Right
        |___|   |___|
        |---|---|---|
Dwn-lft-| 1 | 2 | 3 |-Dwn-rght
        |___|___|___|
              |
            Down
 
    The space bar shoots.

Credits

Graphics, Game animation, blah, blah, etc., were done by Eric-Jon Waugh.

Menu animations were done by Gregory Stone.

Edit the game freely.

Maybe an ice round or an asteroid belt would be nifty. Or a swoop over Mercury.

Links

• The History of A-J Games, Part Eight
• Laser Light (DIYGamer)
• Demu entry
• Play Zark online

Downloads

• Zark (644.0 kB)
• Level 1 (Steel Cliffs) Map (64 kB)
• Level 2 (Into the Gullet) Map (243.3 kB)
• Level 3 (Blue Depths) Map (120.2 kB)
• Level 4 (Showdown) Map (37.4 kB)