Baxter vs. the Brain Snatching Aliens

Baxter vs. the Brain Snatching Aliens

Release type: Shareware
Release date: May 5, 1994
Levels: 2 (in demo version)
Author: John Donald Carlucci
Website: John Donald Carlucci (Blogspot)
Registration bonus: Complete game
Registration price: $20
Related games: Baxter and Art Gecco

Novelist John Donald Carlucci spent the early '90s fiddling with shareware projects. Of those, perhaps the most prominent is Baxter.

Baxter is a rather polished character platformer, with apparently original music by a certain Summer King. The game consists of a few phases, which in the shareware episode mostly occur in geological layers of a single map. The top layer is a matter of hopping through the countryside, avoiding or falling down sinkholes in the Earth.

When you find the right sinkhole, you progress to the second layer. Here you scuttle around beneath the soil, clearing tunnels and searching for an exit. When you do find the right tunnel, you fall through the blackness, down, down, until you hit the roof of a secret science fiction super base.

Here the game turns rather more violent and difficult, as you wind your way through a maze of corridors and traps to find the exit. Monsters appear from wall panels; area lasers periodically zap the character; platforms give unreliable passage across acid pools. Also of note are the teleporters, which make navigation even trickier than it might be.

Baxter does plenty with scant material. The character is well-drawn and well-animated, but only can jump vertically. This is fine. The level design is varied and attractive, and the game takes quite a while to finish, yet it nearly all fits in the one map. The visuals are simple but colorful, and completely original.

Digging up trouble in Baxter vs. the Brain Snatching Aliens

Rather than fight the engine and the tools at hand, Baxter works within the boundaries to find its own identity. Although one side effect is a natural comparison to games like Stefan Meisse's Caves, this level of comfort hides many of the normal design and engine quirks faced by Game-Maker projects. As a result, rather like Jeremy LaMar's Blinky series, Baxter has found something of its own life and distribution apart from the Game-Maker community.

Story

Level 1 of Baxter vs. the Brain Snatching Aliens

And so it begins...

The super secret organization C.H.E.E.S.E. has called in its best agent in an effort to cope with one of the most fiendish plots for world- enslavement ever hatched.

Aliens from Mars have taken the five scientists working on project Timeslip. They have developed the first fully-functional time travel unit and C.H.E.E.S.E. wants it back. From the little information the organization has gathered, it appears that the aliens have used this time machine to establish bases throughout history. They are planning an invasion of not just the Earth, But all of the Earth's history.

The sickening part is that the aliens have removed the brains of the scientists and taken them into the past also. It has been theorized that this provides easier access to the scientist's knowledge, with little chance of escape.

That's the theory, but the boys in C.H.E.E.S.E. research are a bit twisted.

Taking an experimental Laser gun from the organization's armorer Cubed, Baxter travels to the woods on the outskirts of the city. There are many underground passages and caves in this area and the locals have reported strange lights in the night sky.

Instructions

Press the ESC key to return to the game. If playing the game, ESC ends the game.

Function keys

F1 Displays help message.

F2 Status and inventory.

F3 Toggle Music.

F4 Toggle Sound.

F5 Saves the game.

F6 Restores a saved game.

F10 Talk about Virtual Prime, Inc.

Firing keys

         E

      A     D

         X

These keys control the experimental Laser that Baxter uses. Be careful.

Movement keys

Movement left or right is controlled by the left or right arrow keys. The up arrow key controls Baxter's tremendous jumping ability. Watch out that you don't smash his head on too many ceiling.

Some of the manuvers Baxter must perform are tricky, so keep trying. Don't get angry, the world is depending on you.

Baxter is a tough game with some tough mazes to solve. I suggest you have a sharp pencil and lots of paper to map when you begin a maze.

I designed this thing and I still get lost in the mazes.

Credits

Design and Conception: John Donald Carlucci

Music: Summer King

Animations and Fli work: John Donald Carlucci

Virtual Prime, inc Desin team

Get started will ya... Baxter is waiting.

Availability

Available on several shareware compilation CD-ROMs, including:

• Mustang 202 Games Spezial (September? 1994),
• Software Vault: Games 2 (January 1995),
• Beachware's 1000 Games for Windows and DOS (November 1995),
• Night Owl Games 3 (1995),
• Pepe's Power Games (1995), and
• Action-Games Top-Selektion (199x).

Archive history

This game was provided to the archive on September 15, 2010, by Mike Perrucci -- who in turn found it on an Internet archive of Software Vault: Games 2.

Links

Listings

• archive.org entry
• demu.org entry

Misc. Links

• Play Baxter online

Downloads

• Baxter vs. the Brain Snatching Aliens (229.1kB)
• Main map (127.2 kB)
• Passage map (39.3 kB)