Crullo: Adventures of a Donut
The premise here is pure whimsy. After Glubada Pond, the developer settled on a more traditional platform adventure. Instead of a fish shooting bubbles, we have a doughnut shooting raspberry jelly. They didn’t think really hard about this.
Once they settled on a theme, the rest of the game was me screwing around with tools. This may be the first game where A-J Games did all the visuals in Deluxe Paint, and the result is anything but subtle: piles of random blocks decorated with gradient fills. Likewise for the sound the developer pulled out an old Radio Shack keyboard that had been gathering dust since the late ’80s. Whether or not the notion is appropriate to a game about a doughnut, all the sounds are musical, or at least synthesized.
The game, then, has a strange atmosphere. The sound effects give it a cold, mournful, and sterile sound. The visuals are noisy and hard to differentiate. The only thing in keeping with the theme is the monsters; for foes the levels are littered with more savory bakery items: bagels, croissants, English muffins. It's unclear what the monsters are up to, and they have little personality or behavior. They're just sort of there, as obstacles.
The developer put just as much effort into the level design. They chose a block set, settled on a starting and an end point, and drew random, winding tunnels and passages and rooms to connect the two. There's the odd secret passage or geographical feature, but they never really made sure the geometry matched the character’s movements and abilities. If it's possible to progress, it's fine.
Some of the menus were created or altered by RSD's Gregory Stone.
Contents
Story
Crullo and Crulla were living happily in a comfy little midtown bakery, when an evil witch came in and bought Crulla for a magic spell.
Dismayed, Crullo went chasing after her, but they disappeared. Once he had finished sobbing, Crullo remembered that the witch had said something about living in a castle. There were four castles in the area, though -- Sand, Stone, Water, and Wood.
Which had she gone to? Crullo realized he had to search all four. Well, if he had to, he had to.
But first, out of the bakery. Crullo hopped off the shelf and rolled out of the building. Luckily, the clerk's back had been turned. Dodging an army of policemen, Crullo made it to the closest castle, the one of sand. Trembling slightly, he entered the building.
Instructions
____________________________ | KEY | FUNCTION | ---------------------------- Home (7) = Jump to the left Up Arrow = Jump upwards PgUp (9) = Jump to the right Left Arrow = Roll to the left Right Arrow = Roll to the right Down Arrow = Duck Space Bar = Squirt jelly ____________________________ | RING | POWER | ---------------------------- Glass = 100 points Gold = 1 life point Silver = 10 points Gem Studded = Extra life
Credits
Everything: Eric-Jon Waugh
Edit this at your leisure. If I may say so, this would be a great game to test your new characters in before putting them in your own game. For practice, you might want to add more levels to this game, such as a fire castle, where the walls are all burning and flickering. Maybe an air castle, with invisible walls and clouds as background. Or possibly a steel castle, with all kinds of peculiar gizmos in it.
Links
