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Click for full view if it's not already, so the scanlines work.

Ok, HERO: CF is taking a long time cos it's a fairly big project and even the graphics are taking me ages to do and I'm getting annoyed that I have no finished games. So this is was an experiment to see if I could make a graphically much simpler game that still looks appealing and fun to play. It's obviously very Sinclair Spectrum inspired and I tried to keep to the 2 colors per 8x8 block rule except for when the sprites are moving (no I wouldn't even want to attempt coding the colour clash 'feature' of the Speccy). The colors while similar to the Spectrum were actually taken from the equivalent colors of the CPC palette (though I don't think the Spectrum has a dark enough gray like I used for the chains, in fact all it's 'dark' colors are quite bright which was the main reason I used the CPC versions instead). Animation would be simple. Maybe 4 frames walking for most things and lil bits like candle flames and spinning coins are easy to do and add a nice sense of 'life' to things. I always liked old games use of black as it gave an interesting atmosphere to even 'cutesy' stuff like the Dizzy games.

Wouldn't actually take a lot of time at all to make this a real game. Could use my HERO engine cos it's got good platforming and collision stuff and the gamplay would just be typical platformer control the baby dragon, explore the castle, collect the coins and the stolen dragon eggs, dodge some enemies/hazards, flame other weaker enemies (which needs topping up now and then like ammo), your wings aren't strong enough to let you fly but they would allow a double jump.

And yes I know the knights are too short for their own castle and furniture but who cares. These kinds of games never made much sense with stuff like that.

Maybe if I do turn it into a real game I'll dress up the status bar somewhat. Old games used to have pretty elaborate status panels to make up for the sometimes small gameplay area. Not doing all that work now if I don't actually make it a real game but it would be something I'd do.

and yeah I know this kind of graphic style looks crappy if you didn't grow up in the eighties.

Description
Click for full view if it's not already, so the scanlines work.

Ok, HERO: CF is taking a long time cos it's a fairly big project and even the graphics are taking me ages to do and I'm getting annoyed that I have no finished games. So this is was an experiment to see if I could make a graphically much simpler game that still looks appealing and fun to play. It's obviously very Sinclair Spectrum inspired and I tried to keep to the 2 colors per 8x8 block rule except for when the sprites are moving (no I wouldn't even want to attempt coding the colour clash 'feature' of the Speccy). The colors while similar to the Spectrum were actually taken from the equivalent colors of the CPC palette (though I don't think the Spectrum has a dark enough gray like I used for the chains, in fact all it's 'dark' colors are quite bright which was the main reason I used the CPC versions instead). Animation would be simple. Maybe 4 frames walking for most things and lil bits like candle flames and spinning coins are easy to do and add a nice sense of 'life' to things. I always liked old games use of black as it gave an interesting atmosphere to even 'cutesy' stuff like the Dizzy games.

Wouldn't actually take a lot of time at all to make this a real game. Could use my HERO engine cos it's got good platforming and collision stuff and the gamplay would just be typical platformer control the baby dragon, explore the castle, collect the coins and the stolen dragon eggs, dodge some enemies/hazards, flame other weaker enemies (which needs topping up now and then like ammo), your wings aren't strong enough to let you fly but they would allow a double jump.

And yes I know the knights are too short for their own castle and furniture but who cares. These kinds of games never made much sense with stuff like that.

Maybe if I do turn it into a real game I'll dress up the status bar somewhat. Old games used to have pretty elaborate status panels to make up for the sometimes small gameplay area. Not doing all that work now if I don't actually make it a real game but it would be something I'd do.

and yeah I know this kind of graphic style looks crappy if you didn't grow up in the eighties.