Retro Video Gamer

AA member Muddyfunster has announced a new game for the Atari 7800 called Bernie and the Cubic Conundrum.

Inspiration

Bernie and the Cubic Conundrum takes inspiration from Q*Bert and Pippo but changes up the main gameplay tropes with lots of additional elements.

Features

Bernie will have a lot of features, and as of writing a lot are already in and working (I did say this one had moved fast!).

• 50+ levels planned (maybe as many as 75)
• PAL + NTSC palettes and localisation out of the box.
• 1 and 2 player games, plus "Co-opertition" (idea from border lands 3). In Co-opertition, players work together to clear the round but the player who clears most squares wins the round. So it's kind of like a deathless deathmatch.
• Standard and Expert Modes
• Atari Vox support for saving scores
• Atari Vox support for speech (adult and kid friendly - nothing too "industrial", no hard curses so don't worry), or you can just turn it off.
• Visual instruction section for easy "pick up and play"
• Multiple enemy types with different abilities
• Power Pills to turn enemies in to tasty low calorie nutritious snacks
• Trap tiles, trapdoor tiles, hole tiles
• Timers, (have to have timers for speed runs! Actually more like MrDo's timers.)
• Game speeds up as you progress, enemies take less time to think, bombers are faster, freezers appear, traps appear etc.

To Do

A fair bit to do but the game is looking good enough to share some details.

• SFX & Music
• Bernie's movement animation (right now he's using the "suprised" Bernie frame and while that looks funny, wasn't the intended outcome!)
• More enemies
• Better level transitions.
• Tidy up collisions.

I love the look of this game..