Post by Dave's Retro Forge in Randoom Ancient Stones [C64] comments

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Dave's Retro Forge73 days ago (3 edits) (+1)

Congratulations for this great sequel to Randoom, one of my favorite games of recent years, one of those I had most fun with. Graphics, sound and playability are all very good, and the more I play Randoom Ancient Stones the more I like it.

So far I only have a few minor complaints.

I could argue that characters every now and then get lost in the background color, a black outline would have been nice but as matter of fact, this apparent issue hasn't caused me any accidental deaths, so...

...Instead, perfectly overlapping enemies cost me a life several times. It also happened in the original Randoom, but I am pretty sure it was less frequent. Maybe you could simply alternate the Z priority between two overlapping sprites to let the player know of the danger?

Other simple quality of life improvement you may consider is defaulting the continue option to YES! There's nothing worse than accidentally selecting NO because you are eager to get back to the game and forgot not to press fire repeatedly to cut to it quickly.

Oh and there seems to be no pause button?

Cheers,

Davide

Pícaro Games73 days ago (1 edit)

Hi Dave!

About the sprite design we had that debate with Errazking, the graphic designer. We did some tests and we decided that aesthetically they looked better without the black border. As the sprite was in multicolour mode, the border was too wide and saturated the design with black. An overlay with a high-resolution sprite as a border was also not viable because multiplexing was not possible. It has to be taken into account that there are situations where all 8 sprites can be on the same platform height. In any case I'm glad to hear that it didn't cause any major problems.

As for the sentry overlapping is a ‘defect’ already detected and discussed in randoom 1. There are fairly simple ways to mitigate or even fix it, but we decided that it is an addition to the difficulty of the game that adds the incentive to be attentive to the remaining colours to avoid falling into the trap of hunting a sentry ‘escorted’.

On the ‘continue’ part, you are absolutely right. I'll make a list of issues to fix to update the version soon.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

Dave's Retro Forge72 days ago

thank you, don’t forget a pause button!😃👌🏻

Pícaro Games67 days ago

XDD ok

Dave's Retro Forge65 days ago

Hi there!

I just managed to finish Randoom: Ancient Stones for the first time — on HARD difficulty! What a beautiful game. Tons of fun, clever design, and absolutely worth the challenge. I’ll be writing an enthusiastic review for Zzap! Italy very soon.

A few bugs and issues I noticed while playing:

After entering my name at the end, when I completed the game, it froze on a blank blue screen (like a BASIC screen, but empty). Not sure if that's expected or a glitch.
I’m playing on a Breadbin C64 with an Ultimate II+, and noticed that if I reset the machine during gameplay, some of the game text remains "burned" into the screen
The difficulty/continue mode selector behaves a bit strangely — sometimes it stays on the selected option, other times it jumps back to the previous one unexpectedly.
The 3-continue system (which is a great feature!) seems buggy — sometimes I get fewer continues than expected, or none at all, even if I haven’t used any yet.

And here are a few suggestions that might improve the overall experience even more:

The scrolling text at the end is fun, but after such a colourful and lively game, with nice, Pang-style in-between level pictures, it would really shine if it scrolled over a beautiful image or illustration. The plain white-on-black text feels a bit underwhelming after all that action.
The backgrounds are colourful and effective, but they could use a bit more definition in some places. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish where a platform ends. I often think I’ve cleared a ledge, only to bump my head because the edge isn’t clearly visible.
A pause button would be very helpful — and perhaps also a way to quit a game when things go south. Alternatively, you might consider not starting the level automatically after the "Start Level" screen, but waiting for the player to press fire.
During invincibility, a more obvious visual cue would be great — maybe a flicker or the same glow effect used when golems are capturable?

All in all, though, fantastic job — I had a blast playing and really admire the work and energy you’ve poured into this. Looking forward to spreading the word!

Pícaro Games64 days ago

Hi Dave!

Thanks for testing and for your suggestions. I'm already working on version 1.1 to fix some of the issues you mentioned. I'll take your suggestions into account in case I can apply any of them in future revisions.

The pause feature is the one I'm least keen to add, as it takes away from the arcade spirit of the game. However, quite a few people with prostate problems are asking for it, so I guess I'll have to do it ;-P

In the meantime, one trick would be to find areas where the sentries can't reach you so you can go to the toilet in peace ;-)

Dave's Retro Forge64 days ago

Yeah, I totally get the arcade spirit, in fact, after Randoom: Ancient Stones, my urethra’s fully trained. No bathroom breaks needed!

The real challenge is answering clients mid-level… feeding the cat… or memorizing what my wife told me to buy for lunch while dodging golems. 😅

Pícaro Games64 days ago

XD. Ok, ok. I confirm that there will be a pause in 1.1 versión in a few days

itch.io

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