Re: Ideas for an Arcade Game?
@rory-games we actually have a couple of audio frogger variants though none have used the main code, EG blindfold hopper and the curb game, and to an extent death on the road.
One style of game I've always thought we should have in audio is a closed arena shooter, like smash tv or robotron.
To explain, this is a game where your character is in a completely enclosed space and lots of enemies run in to that space. Your object is to shoot at them with a gun whilst avoiding getting hit.
Bare in mind though, that this is not a first person shooter where you run in all directions, its a top down view similar to packman, indeed in smash tv you could run in one direction whilst shooting in another.
I could imagine an audio version working similarly to great toy robbery or super deakout. You hear enemies around you with their position dictated by pitch and volume, however instead of having to avoid them like the great toy robbery elves, you could blast them away, indeed the smash Tv setup would work extremely well in audio since you could hear the enemies and respond accordingly.
Tactics included not being forced into a cornner, learning where in the arena the enemies came from and being aware of that, plus picking up power ups, also staying mobile so that you didn't get swamped by too many enemies at once.
another game I'd love to see in audio was a favourite of mine on the amstrad computer, also bought out on other platforms. This was called roland on the ropes, also known as freddy.
In the game, you played an archaeologist who'd got trapped in an underground tomb and had to make your way up.
this meant you needed to navigate a maze formed of passages going from side to side, and ropes stretching upwards, indeed though the game was a side scroller, you really didn't do much jumping around the screen, you just moved left to right along the passages or jumped up the ropes.
Each maze was randomly generated meaning you didn't know where things were. the object of the game was to make it to the very top where one rope would let you climb out of the tomb, whereupon you'd be on the next level, which was another tomb with more enemies.
the enemies in the game were quite unique. There would be little acid dropping one side or other of each rope, so you had to choose which side to climb on. there would then be rats running along some of the passages, which you had to jump over.
Larger enemies couldn't be jumped over, you'd either have to avoid them or shoot them, however your gun had limited ammo, and some larger enemies like the ghosts couldn't be shot anyway. This meant mainly it was a game of running and being chased whilst hunting to find the correct route.
What made this easier was that some enemies would chase you more than others, so for example, ghosts would pretty much ignore you and travel their own path along a pasage, so you could often just wait for them to go by. Mummies were more aggressive and would actively chase you, but couldn't climb ropes. Giant bats would also chase you, but everytime they came to a rope they'd fly upwards, so you could usually duck into a passage to avoid them.
On later levels there were skeletons and vampires, though I never got far enough to see how those behaved or work out how to avoid them .
You could pick up bonuses in the game, such as items to increase your score, bottles with a couple of of extra health in and occasionally more ammo for your gun, though these were rare (as I said you tended to have to conserve your gun ammo)..
If you wanted to move away from arcade action, another suggestion might be constructing a tower defense game. We have Aprone's towers of war, but there is definitely more that could be done in this genre, and its a style of game wee currently don't have any versions of, it'd also be an interlectually stimulating thing I rather than appealing to quick reactions.
And I'll stop my idea train there before it runs away with me .
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