News — Tardis.dk Remakes

New release: Space Rawks

October 1, 2013 By Sokurah

Not a peep for 9½ months and then suddenly three games in two weeks. That’s so typical of me. 🙂
…I’m like the Octomom of games development. 😀

Today’s release is called Space Rawks. It’s a wordplay on ‘Space Rocks’ (but you probably got that) and it’s basically a remake of Asteroids – but with a lot of new stuff bolted on to make it a bit more interesting that the original game.

The game has more than 20 powerups (and “power-downs”) – not all are equally good, but except one they only lasts a few seconds and will make you chase them. You don’t have to collect them…but where’s the fun in that, right? 😉

This game has had a difficult birth – I started working on it in 2009, and for a while I doubted that I’d ever actually finish it, but I did – and it’s here…and it’s a relief. 😉 There’s a ‘making of‘ post here so you can read a bit about why it took four years to make.

I hope you’ll enjoy it…and don’t forget to let me know by email or on Twitter if you like it.

Filed Under: News, Remakes

More content on the site

September 25, 2013 By Sokurah

I’ve had an section on my site called “Other Stuff” for a while now – but with nothing in it.
I’ve now (finally) done something about it and put it to good use. Well, use, anyway. 😉

So far there’s four subsections to it;

Four sections so far. There may be more later. Any suggestions?

“In the press”
It’s always nice when people appreciate what you do, and sometimes it results in a mention in a magazine, perhaps a review or even an interview. There has been a few over the years – especially in Retro Gamer Magazine. I’m collecting what I know of here – mostly so I have it all in one place, but also handy if anyone else wants to see what stands out.

“Postmortems”
In this section you’ll find “Making of…” articles. As I don’t really blog so much about my games during development you won’t find many details about how they came to be elsewhere, but I’ll try to make some detailed recounts of how development went, in this section. It might be fun to read if you’re into games development – or just curious about it.

“Donations”
My games are free and my site is ad-free. I like it that way – it’s a hobby and I don’t need to generate money from it. Still, if you like my games and feel like you want to show your appreciation by making a donation I’d appreciate it. $1, $5, $10, or whatever amount you feel like…it doesn’t matter – it’s the thought that counts. If you donate I’ll put your name up on this page so everyone can see how cool you are (if you don’t want your name here just let me know).

“Games in Limbo”
Sometimes there’s too many ideas and too little time to work on them – or you just plainly run out of steam, so once in a while development on something stalls. This section is the limbo that those projects with an uncertain future end up in. Usually I’ve already done a lot of work on them already, so perhaps I’ll resume work on some of them one day…but then again – perhaps not.

Filed Under: News, System

Released: The Speccies (1 & 2).

September 16, 2013 By Sokurah

Okay, finally made it – The Speccies has arrived and are now released into the wild.

The Speccies is a puzzlegame for the 48K ZX Spectrum. It’s coded in pure Z80 assembler and contains 101 levels of brain-torturing‎ fun.

The game is not only released as a digital download but also available as a strictly limited run of physical cassettes for the ZX Spectrum – see below and mail me for information if you’re interrested.

We (the artist and me) had problems with parts of the the physical product (mainly the deluxe version) so we decided to hold off the release until after the summer vacation, then we got some better music for it which introduced some last minute bugs, and before we knew of it much more time, than we had anticipated, had gone by. On the plus side that means that – since the game had basically been completed for several months – there was time to submit it to Retro Gamer Magazine and ended up being reviewed and scoring 85% at about the same time the game was released…so that worked out nicely. 😉

During all this time of doing nothing – and being on vacation and not feeling like doing anything – I came across a Flashgame that I liked and I thought “wouldn’t that make an excellent 16K Spectrum game?“, so I began coding that anyway. I reused a lot of stuff from the first game, which saved a lot of time, and by doing that I was able to code this game in 4½ days. It’s not fantastic, it’s not original, but it’s a simple fun puzzle game and I had lots of fun making it…and feel quite satisfied with what I achieved in the time I spent. And so The Speccies II was born. It is included on the tape on the deluxe version of the physical cassette that we sell (all sold out, btw) but it can be downloaded for free as well.

Here’s a picture showing the menus and an ingame screen from each game.

This picture shows the three physical versions of the game being sold; the single cassette version, the double case version and the Ultimate-style deluxe version and in the background – the poster we also produced.

And finally the review of The Speccies from Retro Gamer Magazine (September 2013) when the game scored 85%.

Happy playing. 🙂

Filed Under: News, Remakes, Reviews Tagged With: Assembler, Speccies, Spectrum

“The Speccies” is finished. But when will it be released?

June 24, 2013 By Sokurah

Time for an update, I think. So, my new ZX Spectrum game “The Speccies” has been finished for a couple of weeks now, but it’ll be a little while longer before it’s released into the wild, though.

The reason for the delay is that the artist and me wants to produce a small amount of physical cassettes, that’ll we’ll put up for sale, and it’ll be a while before we get this sorted out. Had it only been the standard-sized cassette boxes it wouldn’t have been much of a delay, but we want to produce a small amount of large Ultimate-style boxes too (similar to the ones in the background of the picture below), and they’ll be brand new boxes made specifically for this purposes (and in blue) which means that we’ll need to have new plastic inlays produced too…and that’s the primary thing holding it up at the moment. Hopefully we’ll get them produced sometime soon – within a couple of weeks.

There will only be a very limited amount of these available – less than half of what there were of Dingo, and they’ll include some sort of extras that we haven’t quite decided on yet, so if you want something really special then this will be the way to go. However, the game will also be available to download for free, so if you’re late to the party, or don’t want to spend any money, then that’s fine too. 🙂

I think the game has turned out very well – but don’t just take my word for it – here’s what the musician had to say about the almost finished version a month ago;

Heheh, what a great little game. Really plays well, doesn’t it!
Can’t really think of anything suggestion-wise — I think you’ve got it all very well covered to be honest. Graphics are awesome, gameplay is awesome, and it’s exactly the sort of game I enjoy playing too (on any platform) so I’m really proud to have my little version of the The Brainies tune in there.
Excellent work. I think it’ll go down very well indeed when it’s released!

Stay tuned for more updates about the release soon.

This is obviously from my previous Spectrum game, but it shows the three sizes the game will be available in – single, double & large custom-case versions.

Filed Under: News, Remakes Tagged With: Assembler, Speccies, Spectrum, ZX