Continuity is a puzzle platformer created by a team of Swedish students at Chalmers University of Technology. It’s a game where you complete levels by grabbing keys and opening doors but that’s not all. A level is broken up into several “cards” which you can rearrange to navigate the level.

Both the “cards” game mechanic and the platforming are quite simple but when combined, they makes for some really difficult and brain-wrecking puzzles. It is one of the better puzzle games I have played this year and makes me wonder why no one has thought of this before.

The visuals are simple as well. Your character is a stick man and levels are only black and white with red marking keys and doors. Nothing too fancy to distract you from all the puzzling levels. The music was fantastic. I loved the soft music that played when you were zoomed out, but I wasn’t that big of a fan of the music that played when you were platforming. It gave me a sense of urgency whenever I zoomed in even though there was nothing to be urgent about.

The main gripe I had with Continuity was that some levels were way too easy, even ones towards the end. Still, I took me an hour or two to beat the entire game.

Continuity is great puzzle platformer with a simple, but ingenious, concept that would make M.C. Escher proud.

Star Guard is an awesome little run-n-gunner from Vacuum Flowers. You play as a pixelated green guy shooting lasers at pixelated red guys. I love retro styled games and this one was definitely a blast.

The graphics and sound effects have a simple, minimalist style to them but the gameplay is pure fun. It’s fast paced and each of the level ramps up in difficulty perfectly. Each level also features new red bad guys to destroy, which is great cause if adds variety to the game.

Another thing I loved about it was that the story didn’t take away from the action. The story appeared on the level as typed out messages rather than cutscenes. So if you wanted to, you could just skip right passed them.

One little nitpick I had with the game was the infinite lives and how enemies and mines didn’t reset when you died. With the infinite lives, I found that I didn’t really care if I died. I could just respawn at the nearest checkpoint and plow past the enemies. This really took away the fun and frustration I know and love from retro games and made the final boss way too easy. But I guess this is what hard mode is for.

All in all, Star Guard is a solid game.

Here is the completed game (or as complete as its gonna get) of I WOKE UP LATE AND NOW I HAVE TO ROCKET JUMP PASSED ZOMBIES TO GET TO CLASS. Shooting, zombies, rocket jumping; It’s all there.

I didn’t add the other weapons cause of lack of time. Also I didn’t really test the release build so there may be some bugs or two in there.

Download the game.

So its finally starting to look like a game. I got some movement and viewport scrolling working. There also some particle effects, as you can see from the smoke trails.

Download Benchmark 3

In this benchmark, I got some of the menus to work + a slideshow of the storyboards images. Not really anything exciting. Though, I don’t really like the color of the title.

Download Benchmark 2

by Chris Chen

Introduction

This is a document for a game called “I woke up late and now I have to rocket jump pass zombies to get to class.” This game will have sprite-based animation, tiled backgrounds, collision detection, phsyics, AI, side scrolling & gravity, efficient memory management, render threading, and all that fun stuff.

Technology

IWUPANIHTRJPZTGTC will be developed for windows using C++ and DirectX. Artwork will be created in Adobe Photoshop.

Story

I stayed up late the day before playing some good old TF2 into the wee hours of the night. I doze off onto the keyboard. And I sleep. And sleep. And sleep. And sleep. Until my roommate wakes me up and says, “Don’t you have this uber important quiz today?” So I jolt out of bed and rush to class putting on the only wearable thing I can find – a set of BLU Soldier uniform – only to discover when I walk outside that the world has been overrun with zombies.

Being the excellent student that I am, I still insist on going to class. So I take my Soldier uniform and rocket launcher and calmly walk to class blasting away at zombies.

Objective

The objective is to get to class. There will be hordes of zombies trying eat my brains but I’ll have to dispose of them using my rocket launcher, shotgun, and trusty shovel. Destruction of city also forces me to rely on my rocket jumping skills to navigate around the rubble and over broken structures.

Gameplay

The main character will be based heavily on Team Fortress 2’s Soldier class except this game will be a 2D sidescroller. I’ll be able to move left and right, crouch, and jump. Because of the heavy equipment I am carrying, I cant jump very high but I can ROCKET jump to get to higher places or travel faster.

There will be three weapons, the main one being the rocket launcher. Besides the obvious use of a rocket launcher when faced with zombies, jumping while firing a rocket at my feet will blast me towards the opposite direction. The same technique can be applied on the ground, walls, platforms, etc. This can be used to clear obstacles or get away from a mob of zombies. The secondary weapon is the shotgun, which will come in handy when surrounded and all out of rockets. The last is the shovel because killing zombies with shovels is fun.

The zombies will be your average mind-less zombies, except they run fast like in 28 Days Later. So they’ll either have to be blown up or rocket-jumped passed.

Random drops will be scattered to refill on ammo and health.

Controls

The game will use both keyboard and mouse. Keyboard for movement and mouse for aiming at shooting.

• A – left
• D – right
• SHIFT – crouch
• SPACE – jump
• 1,2,3 – rocket, shotgun, shovel
• ESC – pauses game and shows menu
• MOUSE – aim weapon
• MOUSE L – fire weapon

GUI

Main Menu – Will display a the logo for the game and an image the main character sleeping with two menu items:

• wake up– starts a new game
• back to sleep – exits to desktop

Pause menu – Invoked when player presses ESC while game is in progress

• return – go back to playing the game
• main menu – goes back to main menu
• exit – exits to desktop

Ingame GUI – the following will be displayed on the screen:

• Health Points
• Ammo for current weapon

Art

The art will be made in a pixel art style and will be all original (if time permits)

Main character

• Running forwards
• Running backwards
• Short jump
• Rocket Jump
• Holding RL
• Holding shotgun
• Holding shovel
• Take damage
• Dying

Projectiles

• Rockets
• Shotgun blast

Zombies

• Walking
• Running
• Taking damage
• Exploding

Foreground – various platforms and obstacles resembling rubble and torn structures

Backgrounds – will feature broken buildings

Items

• Health
• Ammo