2013 September — Tardis.dk Remakes

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.

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.