Thank you, uglifruit! I'm quite proud of the design. Working on a slightly more varied version right now, with plans for a couple of bigger games in the same vein.

You're very kind, Gazzapper!

Yay! Thank you so much, Jupi!

Yay! Thank you so much, Jupi!

You were right. By holding each key down until it beeped, I was able to play consistently. Still ran into a show-stopping bug right away: bought some wares, jumped to a nearby system, sold them... but the game continued to show my cargo hold as 3/4 full (even while correctly listing no content). So I was unable to buy more cargo for the next jump.

In related news, it looks like you never implemented fuel consumption and refueling. Is that correct?

Note to players: if your emulator seems to act weirdly after loading the .tap file, that's because you're dealing with a 128K game. Select 128 BASIC mode and run it from there.

Hi there! Your .tap file appears to be corrupt. When trying to load it in Fuse, I'm told "libspectrum: libspectrum_tap_read: not enough data in buffer". BASin does load it, but the source code looks wrong, and the game won't start. Hope this helps, and sorry.

Good work! The game is responsive and playable, and looks good enough too. It's hardly my favorite genre, but the quality is obvious. Keep up the good work.

Good looking game, and it brings back memories, but I have to mash the buttons a whole lot before anything happens, especially on the local sector map. Which, by the way, should also tell me the economy type of neighboring systems, so I can make an informed decision as to what merchandise might bring me a profit. On the plus side, yay, no having to worry about the 7-light-year jump limit. Overall, an interesting mix of old and new -- just drop that animated crosshair cursor, please. :P

Oh, hey, I actually managed to win the game after a few attempts, and even defeated one tiny attacker. Guess there's a functional learning curve after all. Most effective play style is still to lawnmower the map. No idea how else it could be done, though.

@Gazzapper To be honest, I don't remember how I got JSSpeccy to work three years ago -- just copied over the files from my older game and replaced the snapshot. You can probably snatch the files right from my iframe through View Source. The emulator supports .tzx and .z80 files at the very least.

Excellent presentation, but like most real-time games written in Basic it moves very slowly. Worse, shooting the first bandit I could reach seemed to have no effect -- they just sort of returned to life right away. Still a notable entry.

Oh, wow, this game is amazing, especially given the limitations, and plays very well. Everything is crystal-clear, too. Only downside, it strikes me as punishingly difficult, especially the battles. Still, you take the prize as far as I'm concerned.

Duuude. What in the world possessed you to make the game play a tone for each map tile? I had to give up after the 40th or so lest it drove me crazy! :P

Interesting! I've heard of a few text adventures with relative as opposed to absolute movement, but hadn't played one until now. Is there anything in the maze apart from dead ends?

Not bad! This is fast, even too fast considering a Basic game can't respond to keys quickly enough, and the screen wrapping around is a neat variation. But the aforementioned problem makes it all too easy to miss fruit, and as that kills you by starvation very quickly, the game ends up being rather on the hard side. YMMV.

Not bad! I must say it plays much better than last time I tried, and makes more sense as a result. It's not my style at all, but the quality is obvious. Bonus points for the concept, too.

Nice idea, and it doesn't seem necessary to understand UK politics all that well in order to play, which is good. But the day counter barely crawls downwards, and the actions to take are repetitive, with less than obvious effects. Some instructions would help, and making the gameplay more dynamic (even at the expense of realism) wouldn't hurt either.

Oh, hey, a Snake game that actually works! Got 343 points on my first attempt, too. Wish food didn't appear right on the edge so often, but that's a nitpick. Great work!

Yay! Glad to hear the gameplay is compelling.

Bonus points for having a nice title screen and instructions. The game is even playable at first, as the delay in responding to a key is predictable. But as the pace accelerates, controls respond much more erratically, and I just started missing every single apple. Doubly so as they also start rotting away more quickly.

Good effort, really, but Sinclair Basic is simply inadequate for realtime games.

Best presentation for a game in this jam so far, original if confusing gameplay, and it's actually playable for a change despite the slow response. Still gets annoying after a while. Sinclair Basic is just too slow for realtime games. A good effort anyway.

Thank you, @Gazzapper!

I checked before making the comments. And I downloaded your entry right after you had made an update, as it happens. But yeah, now it works.

Ah, interpreters, my one weakness. And a very meta one at that. But SONG doesn't seem to work for me, and CLS only seems to take 1 for blue as an argument. It would also be nice if I could exit cleanly to Sinclair Basic. Unless you're trying to protect your source code? Either way, a good start!

Not bad! This game moves better than other real-time entries I've seen in the jam, but still suffers from similar problems, mainly unresponsive controls. If the bad guy was actively coming after me instead of moving at random, I wouldn't stand a chance. Turn-based would be better given the limitations. And more Speccy-like directional keys, such as QAOP or 5-6-7-8, would be appropriate. Speaking of which, testing for character codes 8, 10, 11 and 9 respectively would allow players to just use the good old cursor keys. Still, a good start!

Hi there! I'm leaving you a comment here because you don't have them enabled on the game page. Unfortunately you've published the game as a GameMaker file, which means only someone who has GameMaker can open and play it. Did you mean to export it instead, perhaps?

Heehee, this is kind of cute.

Too bad you never continued, this could have been a fun premise...

Not a bad experiment, really. I don't have a better idea either, but it seems that a non-trivial story is possible within the system. Panels with choices should be more obvious before you hover with the mouse over them, but that's a nitpick. Filed away.

Hee, a room escape game in Twine, and in verse, no less. And somehow it manages to not be trivial, despite the small size. I think you're onto something here. The concept may be worth revisiting.

This is intriguing... I tried to write a story based on exactly this sort of surreal invasion, and failed utterly. But as an experimental tabletop RPG, it might just work.

Heeey, that's a neat little experiment. Nice touch, suggesting "help" as the first command without any need for more explanation. And I've seen home-brewed text adventure engines that fare worse without having to cope with procedurally generated content. It does feel odd that the game wouldn't recognize an object it mentions in the room description, precisely because it's been put there by the game engine itself, but oh well, it's an experiment. Bonus points for the retro look. And did I mention the ability to create objects? Hello, MU*s! How cool is that?

If I was to recommend something, it would be to implement the "quit" and "restart" commands, better error messages from the parser and perhaps the "examine" command as a synonym for "look at". Oh, and maybe a cache for the knowledge database? It takes a while to pull it from the 'net even on a broadband connection.

Good work there, and I can't wait to see more of it.

Not bad for one day of work. The music is scary, and flashlights are always an effective gimmick in games. Even stumbling on walls is realistic. But it can be hard to find all the soul trap pieces, and an element of strategy would be useful -- otherwise you're just stumbling in the dark at random. Still, a good start.

Of all the games in the jam, this is the one I'd love to see redone in ZXBasic. Hopefully also with support for the actual cursor keys, or at least a prompt for people to use 5678, because only those of us who grew up with the Speccy would even think to try it, and that limits the potential audience.

Silly looking game, and it somehow manages to work in my browser without freezing it, despite being made in Unity. But you should really post a link to it, and a screenshot, not to mention a few words about the game (on its page, too). A good start!

Oh, wow, this was totally worth the wait. Better presentation than any game that made it in the jam, smooth gameplay, and it's fascinating to see what backgammon used to look like seven thousand years ago. :P Congratulations!

Right here. You can download JSSpeccy and embed it in a webpage of your own. View source on my own entries to see how.

Afraid I never used qaop, went with JSSpeccy for my own games.

That's expected behavior. Screenshots aren't shown on the game page for browser games. They still show up in other places on the website, like the pop-up in various listings, and in game jams.