Crown of the Mountain King by vilcans
Rumor has it that the Mountain King's long lost crown is still hidden somewhere in the caverns below these abandoned mines. Steer your hovercraft carefully to avoid the obstacles that hide in the dark. The hovercraft is sensitive - a single touch is enough to make it blow up, but we trust your skills as a pilot to navigate it, and make sure you touch nothing except for the white landing pads, where you also have the opportunity to refuel your craft. But beware, even when you have found the crown - mind that it is made of solid gold and very heavy. Will you be able to bring it back to the surface again alive?
This is a game for ZX Spectrum, a popular home computer released in 1982. If you don't have the real hardware, any emulator that supports Z80 snapshots should work. The easiest way is to use the web based emulator.
Some people have had problems with the browser crashing on the web-based emulator (emulating a 3.5 MHz CPU without a proper graphics chip maybe is too much for it?), so if that happens, try another emulator like Fuse which I used for development. It's important that the emulator simulates the real speed of the Spectrum, otherwise the hovecraft may not be visible. If you use Zesarux, make sure you enable "Real Video" in the settings.
Instructions
W to accelerate your craft upwards. This will use fuel. Gravity will take care of pulling you down when you release the key.
A to move left.
D to move right.
Do not touch anything except the white landing pads. If you touch down gently on one of those, your fuel will be refilled, and you will respawn on that pad if you crash.
Go down the mines and caves and find the throne room of the Mountain King and land there. Then you have picked up the crown. Find your way back to the starting point with it, but be careful as your hovercraft is now heavily loaded.
You have infinite lives. Who said my games are too hard?
There is no ending state. If you manage to get back and land on the starting pad, congratulate yourself.
Tips
- Be careful when accelerating so you don't crash into something above you.
- Apply a little thrust now and then while falling so you don't fall so fast that you can't react.
Other information
Timelapse video of the development:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcWKAuzXswk
Ratings
| Overall | 435th | 3.478⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 413th | 3.37⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 488th | 3.13⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 470th | 3.543⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 496th | 3.37⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 670th | 2.357⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 589th | 3.023⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 10🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
I got to a throne, and then I didn't know what to do???
The graphics feel exactly as they should - you obviously had to stick with the limitations of the hardware, and you made good use of it. The mechanics also worked well - this would feel right at home in the era of the ZX Spectrum in my opinion. I was a little bit sad about not having a real end state, but of course, game jams are very limited. (Especially when you're working with a limited system, that likely doesn't have much in the realm of game engines to build off of.)
Thanks for a fun entry!
I'll admit, I'm not intricately familiar with the differences in computers of that era. I was born in the late 80s so I only experienced them much later. So, that difference from other ZX Spectrum games was lost on me. Either way I really liked it!
Well done sir!
Question: did the ZX spectrum support sounds/beeps? That is the only thing I'm missing from this game; some audio feedback :innocent:
This is a really simple but effective game. The amount of level design and subtlety you achieved with this kind of limitations ("hardware", gameplay, 2 types of tiles...) is really impressive.
I might retry it later, very good job !
Unfortunately didn't finish it since my browser crashed due to low memory (might be my system, but could be a memory leak in the project).
Also it took some time for me to realize that I had picked up the crown, so that is an area for improvement :D
Good job!
@wouter52 Yes, the Spectrum had a beeper. It was controlled only by the CPU, not by a timer chip as on the IBM PC, so the only way to play a continuous beep is to dedicate all CPU resources to it. But the game has sound when you accelerate and an explosion when you crash. Maybe there was something wrong with your sound settings?
@thegreenworm @gaminghamster @rateddfordegenerate Thanks for letting me know about that problem. It should be impossible for the game to crash the browser as it's running inside an emulated machine with only 48 K of RAM. But maybe it's a bug in the Javascript-based emulator, or the browser itself. You can try downloading a Spectrum emulator like Fuse (http://fuse-emulator.sourceforge.net/), which I used while developing, or Zesarux (https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux/releases), which I haven't tested the game on. There are lots of others too.
@generic-games Thank you! Yes, I think very few Spectrum games run at 50 FPS, so I'm a bit proud of it.
@omid-ghavami Thanks for noticing the level design. I put some thought of it, and in combination with some happy coincidences, it turned out very good. Good idea flying off into space in the end!
I'll try your game again later this week, maybe my browser did not play the sound right 🤨
I wish there was a category for technical archivement, this been in spectrum deserves recognition.
Good entry.
Thank you for your entry
I thought it was a perfect challenge and length. The level design is really spot on. The checkpoints were well placed and I felt like I was always making good progress. It was nice having some choice with alternative paths and a bit of exploration. I thought it was really clever having to get to the throne and work your way back. The added weight and new perspective created a fun challenge. I just barely got to a few of the checkpoints and it was very satisfying.
Great work on it, I had a lot of fun.
I was not able to reproduce it just now, however. I may fuss with it some more later in case there's any debug output.
Just as cheesepencil clarified it was just the specific tab that crashed.
I didn't rate it in audio because frankly the beeps got quite annoying pretty fast but I'm not familiar enough with the ZX Spectrum to be able to blame you for it.
[I played it live](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1011129873?t=1h18m45s)