Herby: a game of Maze Exploration

Started by Radiant, Wed 13/03/2019 22:25:17

Previous topic - Next topic

Radiant



Search the maze for keys and treasure! John 'DRJ' Vanderaart is one of the first published game designers from the Netherlands, best known for "Eindeloos". Herby was his first game on the C64, which I played as a child. This is also my first game, as I did a remake in BASIC back then. Decades later I found out I still had the source code, so I decided to update it to more modern systems, aided by Elissa for the art. And dedicated to one of the people who (although we never met personally) inspired me to take up game design!

Featuring one maze by DRJ, one by myself, and a random maze generator; and the famous Popcorn as background music. Unlike the originals, this one has save points and an automap. Enjoy!

Download here.


Shadow1000

I played the first maze (Pieter's Maze) and it was a lot of fun! Really well done and polished graphics and gameplay. It took most of the night to get the song out of my head  ;)

Some thoughts about the gameplay:
Spoiler

- I actually wasn't sure about the objective of the game. I had assumed that it was to explore 100% of the maze, getting as much treasure as possible but when I had about 73% completed, I hit the big treasure that danced around the screen and it SEEMS that the game was won. I went back to continue the game till I got 100% of the maze and nothing really happened so I think the goal is to find the big treasure. However, that feels a bit unintuitive to play a game that can be won at any random time without having completed a certain amount.

- At first, I thought that keys would open locks, so as soon as I got my first key, I headed for the first lock and CRASH! It took till MUCH later till I understood how that works. I won't say more detail but it seems that discovering the gameplay is a part of the game.
[close]

So, this is a really fun and well-designed game that takes a bit of time to get used to but after that, it's addictive. Well done!


selmiak

after exploding too much the character started to walk up all the time without me pressing the up button. my keys are not locked or broken, so this is probably a bug.

Radiant

Quote from: Shadow1000 on Fri 15/03/2019 13:46:19
I played the first maze (Pieter's Maze) and it was a lot of fun! Really well done and polished graphics and gameplay. It took most of the night to get the song out of my head  ;)
Thank you! You mention "CRASH!" in your comment, did you mean the character goes poof, or the game crashes? If the latter, please tell me what message you get? I've been unable to reproduce it so far.

Quote from: selmiak on Sun 17/03/2019 10:45:24
after exploding too much the character started to walk up all the time without me pressing the up button. my keys are not locked or broken, so this is probably a bug.
Hm, that's weird; there's nothing in the code that should do that. Does it stop when you tap the 'up' key once?

Shadow1000

Quote from: Radiant on Sun 17/03/2019 11:08:37
Quote from: Shadow1000 on Fri 15/03/2019 13:46:19
I played the first maze (Pieter's Maze) and it was a lot of fun! Really well done and polished graphics and gameplay. It took most of the night to get the song out of my head  ;)
Thank you! You mention "CRASH!" in your comment, did you mean the character goes poof, or the game crashes? If the latter, please tell me what message you get? I've been unable to reproduce it so far.

Sorry for not being more clear! I just means the character suffers death and has to start from the previous checkpoint. He also suffers hearing me utter every foul word in the English language, as I did throughout the game. I hope he's not sensitive to this type of thing.

Radiant

Quote from: Shadow1000 on Sun 17/03/2019 13:32:38I hope he's not sensitive to this type of thing.

He's possibly related to this guy,

Shadow1000

Quote from: Radiant on Sun 17/03/2019 20:52:19
Quote from: Shadow1000 on Sun 17/03/2019 13:32:38I hope he's not sensitive to this type of thing.

He's possibly related to this guy,


Hey, yes, exactly!

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk