Neon Invasion Earth — Tardis.dk Remakes

New game released: Neon Invasion Earth.

January 20, 2017 By Sokurah

FINALLY, DID IT! – my circular vector version of Space Invaders is finally done.
…only took 6.5 years too. 😀

The actual development time is considerably less though – probably a year or so, but due to the game growing way beyond what I had envisioned and the impossible task of balancing the gameplay difficulty because of it, I simply lost faith in it despite it being at least 90% complete when I put it on hold.

However, it has now been de-mothballed and the last bits finished off, so it can be played.

Click the logo below or click this link to go to the page for the game.
You may also want to read the postmortem I wrote on the game.

The game can’t be played through in one sitting so you shouldn’t expect that. Some levels are easy, some hard, some boring, some fun and at times you can basically only win by sacrificing lives or all your shields, but it’s possible to play through the entire thing in 2-3 hours.

I hope it’ll entertain you in one way or the other. Let me know what you think.

Filed Under: News, Original games, Remakes Tagged With: Neon, Neon Invasion Earth, Vector graphics

WIP resurrection – Neon Invasion Earth.

January 6, 2017 By Sokurah

I (annoyingly) haven’t been very productive the last couple of years, but I (also annoyingly) have several WIP’s that are very far in development, but for some reason or other has stalled.

One of these games is “Neon Invasion Earth” – a game I started working on back in 2010. Originally just the idea of a very simple circular Invaders game, but one guy really liked the idea and gave me lots of suggestions for enhancements … and so it evolved. Unfortunately, efter a while, he fell off the edge of the Earth and without his input and testing, development on it stalled and the approximately 90% complete game has been in limbo for at least 5 years. But no more – I’ve started working on it again and you can expect a release very soon. 🙂

In its new form the game will be a lot easier than originally intended. Originally you’d have to complete the first 10 levels to be able to start at level 10. Then you’d have to play until level 25 before being able to start a game there, etc. You can see what I mean from this picture.

Old way of selecting which level to start at.

But I’ve now changed it to this more classic way of doing it, so you can now start at any level you’ve reached. You still only get 3 lives but you can keep trying to complete a single level until you get it right. So it won’t be as devastatingly difficult as it originally would have, but hopefully it’ll be more fun and less frustrating.

New way of doing it. It’ll be much easier to progress this way.

Ironically enough, a week ago I jokingly wrote in my personal New Years message on Facebook, that one of my wishes for 2017 would be “no alien invasions” …and now – just a week later – I’ve decided to put out a game about aliens invading Earth. Funny how things work out sometimes. 🙂

Anyway, more about it soon, when it’s done. Stay tuned. 🙂

Filed Under: Original games Tagged With: Invaders, Neon, Neon Invasion Earth, Vectors

Nine months without new games. That’s about to change.

October 2, 2012 By Sokurah

After what seems like a long time without any notable news, or new games, I’m finally at at point where I can safely say that “Yes, there will be more games…and soon” 🙂

Over the last month I’ve been working on 4 of my games in progress. That would under normal circumstances be crazy, but they’re all so close to completion, so while I’m waiting for the final graphics, music or some feedback one one game I can usually tweak something on another game.

First game to be finished will be Black Widow. It’s basically finished but I’ll wait the rest of this week to see if I get any feedback that needs attention, then compile the final version during the coming weekend. It should be out next week.

My third Christmas game, Buggerman, is also largely finished – I just need to tweak the music a bit, but as it’s a Christmas game I’ll hold its release off until December.

Hopefully I’ll also have X-Quest 2 done before the end of the year. The coding is mostly done and bar some small tweaks here and there all it needs are new graphics and some better sounds. I can do the sounds myself and I’ve found a guy that wants to do the graphics, but he’s a tad busy at the moment. I’m really hoping he can find the time soon, so I can get this game out there.

Finally I’ve also been getting back into my vector Invaders game, Neon Invasion Earth. The last time I worked on this was in January 2011 when I began adding a “classic Invaders mode”, and I’ve been finishing that over the last couple of days. Yay. That still leaves the main game to be finished, but this is also mostly done with mostly some smal bugs and a whole lot of gameplay tweaking and testing left.

So there it is; my roadmap for the immediate future – two games already finished and two more very close to completion, so check in again soon …there’s a good chance that there will be something new to download. 🙂

I’ve also decided to open up the site for comments again, without registering as a user first, but if the spam gets to bad I’ll put that limitation back. But let’s see how it goes for now. 😉

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Black Widow, Buggerman, Neon Invasion Earth, X-Quest 2

Dreams, Delays and Dingos

August 31, 2011 By Sokurah

Time flies and it takes long between releases because I seem to start more games than I can manage, and then put them on hold when they’re almost done. This year I’ve been working on my Circular Invaders Game but the guy who helped me fine-tune the gameplay suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth so I put that on hold temporarily.

Then I resumed work on X-Quest 2, which is basically done now but only needs new graphics, and I’d found an artist who seemed really good, but he only delivered one frame and now he’s stopped answering my mails. Not good – especially after just being mentioned in issue 93 of Retro Gamer Magazine. Oh well, it’ll get done…only with a delay.

Before them there is a string of other unfinished remakes, but I’ll get to them in time. Slowly, perhaps, but I’ll get to them. I’m especially looking forward to getting back to work on Black Widow and Psycho Pigs UXB, but I can only work effectively on one game at the time.

All these WIP’s, and the stress I’m putting myself under just by thinking about them, is probably the reason I woke up this morning – stressed over some unfinished tank game (no, I’m not working on any tank games, so who knows why :)). That’s the third morning in a row that I’ve woken up with a dream like that. Can you see why I would really like to finish all my unfinished WIP’s? 😀

Of course, all these delays frustrates me and I decided to put that frustration to good use and channel all that energy into making a new game (typical…see how easy it happens? 😉 ) so I started working on something I’ve wanted to do for almost 30 years – making a new ZX Spectrum game.

And that was the birth of Dingo – a “lost Ultimate game”. I’ve already remade this arcade game back in 2008 for Windows and in 2011 for Mac, but now I’m remaking it again in z80 assembler for the ZX Spectrum. It only took me about a month to make the game and I was lucky enough to atract the attention of Mark R. Jones – who used to work for Imagine and Ocean back in the 80’s – and he has done all the stunning new graphics for the game. The game is currently finished, playable and works as it should, and according to Mark its “stupidly addictive” so I must have done something right. 😀

That being said, the game could still use a bit of spit and polish. I’m currently working on improving the sprite routines (3rd day in a row, argh) and it also needs music and better sound effects, but the plan is to have it completely finished and presented at the retro event, Replay, in Blackpool in November.

You can read more about the development of the game here, and below is a picture of the game.