Robo-Wars
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 1995
Levels: 1
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: N/A
Not to be mistaken for Sherwood Forest Software's Robo Wars.
With Robo-Wars, Alan Caudel demonstrates then abandons a promising and original design before it really even gets started. Caudel is known for his scattershot experiments, pushing Game-Maker's potential a bit at a time and then moving on once he has learned what he set out to. Usually that knowledge turns up again, refined and restyled, in the context of a more ambitious project.
Robo-Wars doesn't quite fit the pattern, as what he has here is less revolutionary than it is simply interesting. It's not a template for later developments; it's just a neat game that, it would seem, never went anywhere.
What we basically have here is a side-scrolling shooter with Robotron-style controls (already a great fit for Game-Maker, only seldom used) and unusual gravity effects. Instead of using Game-Maker's built in gravity properties, Caudel has the character slowly idle downward -- a process that can be reversed through regular use of thrusters.
Already the basic mechanics are sort of neat. What really sells the package, though, is the presentation. Visually, mixes geometric shapes; strong, solid colors with just a little shading; and sparse architecture. The effect is very clean, very bold, resembling a late-1980s arcade game. The game's one level is also distinguished by some interesting destructible terrain -- though RSD's characteristic "bumpy monster" syndrome dampens the effect somewhat.
Robo-Wars is a good start of something. There's not enough game here to know quite how it would have played out, but its snapshot of a world and its way of navigating that terrain echo with suggestion of what might have been.
(From Alan Caudel) I think the original idea was to have a one-on-one player vs. computer almost-fighting-game. I was frustrated at the inability to make a fighting game (Street Fighter 2 may have been big around that time). So I set out to make the enemy take many hits to destroy, and its behavior would change after each time it took damage. Not quite a fighting game, but it could have been interesting.
Story
N/A
Instructions
- J/L/,: Fire power orbs left/right/down
- K: Fire pink energy pulses upward
Numerical keypad:
- 7/8/9: Blast up-left/up/right
- 4/6: Walk left/right
- 2: Fall downward
Credits
Designed by Alan Caudel.
Availability
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History
After an earlier wave of rediscoveries, on July 13 2011 Alan Caudel provided another archive of previously missing Game-Maker material, including the following:
Links
Downloads
- Robo-Wars (80 kB)
