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Spellrazor

A topic by tesselode created Jan 12, 2016 Views: 1,369 Replies: 11

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Spellrazor is an interesting top-down action arcade game with roguelike elements. It's got a couple of gimmicks: 1) you have 26 spells, 1 for each letter of the keyboard, and 2) the game is haunted.

If you miss the days of creepy, sinister, neon-tinged arcade games (especially Williams' games) that reward deep knowledge and skillful play, then this game is for you.

Spellrazor is an insane early-1980s-tinged Rogue-meets-Defender/Berzerk arcade-adventure game with (gulp) 27 fire buttons, auto-targeting, a bunch of secrets and a rather creepy meta-story.

Being a conversion of a semi-mythical arcade game developed by Duncan Bower in 1981, this version includes the unusual in-game development/debugger console which exposes the weird, glitchy nightmare of the game's mythology.

This is a cool game! Great aesthetics, interesting gimmicks.

Go play it!

clyde8 years ago

I typically have a hard time getting into faux computer-interfaces, but the unwieldiness of the letter-based spell-system lured me in. I found myself staying in rooms and testing out spells, and it was during one of these times I started noticing the messages. Before I knew it, I had exhausted a good amount of fiction and looked forward to testing potential links with the game-game. I'm really enjoying this. One thing that I dislike is the camera movement, I can see why everyone was getting headaches.

tesselode8 years ago

People were getting headaches? Where did you see that?

clyde8 years ago

The game's fiction talks about players getting nausea and headaches. To find the reference, type "secrets" in the console and read the entry for "April-3".

tesselode8 years ago

Oh, I haven't played that much yet. :P

clyde8 years ago

There's some interesting stuff in the narrative that I'm trying to figure out how to apply to the game-portion. But I keep on dying. If you manage to make some progress, I'd love to hear about it.

flankstaek8 years ago

I absolutely love the use of the console interface, I'd love to see how else it eventually gets integrated into the main gameplay.

clyde8 years ago

What have you seen of it so far?

clyde8 years ago (1 edit)

I'm still making slow progress. I unlocked a new term tonight. I like how I don't have to worry about saving my progress if I can just remember the last term I discovered. Spellrazor implies that it can be psuedo-hacked and I keep trying things out that don't actually work, but there is something to be said about a game that evokes imaginary game-mechanics.

Fluttermind8 years ago (1 edit)

There are a couple of reasons people might get headaches. One is banal, and the other, evil. The banal one can be partially altered by experimenting with the + and - keys. The evil one requires getting further in, and finding the secret locations and ritual areas.

If there's a specific change you'd like to see on the camera, let me know (lock to center, for example).

clyde8 years ago

It's not the camera-movement when momentum starts, it's the lerp back into position once character-movement has stopped. I can reproducibly make myself slightly nauseous just by moving to the right just a bit, letting the camera slowly center, move to the left just a bit, allow the camera to slowly center, (repeat 10 times).

Locking the camera to the character would certainly solve it, but I wonder if there is also a way to implement the lerp back to resting-position that would take care of the problem. I don't know.

Fluttermind8 years ago (1 edit)

Hmm... It already does a lerp, but it's constant speed. The look-ahead code offsets the camera in the direction of movement. When you stop moving (or flip direction) along a specific axis, the camera tries to ensure you're not left staring into an area that's no longer of interest to you. I'll have a play and see if I can do something softer.

[Edit: just made a change that might fix it for you. Check out the next release when it comes up.]