New game: COUSIN HORACE (partially developed with AGD)

[alessandro]

Hello everyone!

After many months of work, finally COUSIN HORACE is here, my new game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48/128 - an epic adventure with the following main features:

• Five different chapters for a mix of platform, shoot-‘em-up, puzzle solving and maze exploration.
• An immersive plot illustrated by ‘Spectrumized’ pictures and comic book-like in-between screens.
• Comes in TZX (Biturbo-II fast loader) and TAP format.
• Game and documentation immediately available in six different languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.

But who is Cousin Horace, actually?

The idea came to me by looking at the cassette inlays of the versions of Horace games made for the Timex Sinclair 2068, the American clone of the Spectrum. The character portrayed on them bears very little resemblance to the one we all know and love, although the games themselves are indistinguishable from their Spectrum counterparts.

I then imagined such character not to be the British Horace, but his American cousin – incidentally going by the name of Horace as well – living his same adventures, or a sort of parallel life if you prefer, on the other side of ‘The Pond’. Hence COUSIN HORACE.

Each chapter poses a different challenge for the player, requiring different skills to be negotiated. By successfully ending each one of them (except for the last chapter, of course) the player will receive a code to enter after loading the next one in order to start it.

The game was developed with the help of several programming tools, among which La Churrera, Arcade Game Designer and Shoot-Em-Up-Designer.

AGD was used in particular for the third and fifth chapters.

Download it from my web site (link at the bottom of article)

Have fun!

[alessandro]

Cousin Horace scored 90% plus a Sizzler! award on Retro Gamer issue 136! Yay!!!

[andrewvanbeck]

This looks like a lot of fun, although not ridiculously difficult like the old Horace games. The graphics are awesome.

Are my eyes deceiving me though, it looks like you are using a sprite mask, you gotta tell us how you did that!

[alessandro]

May 25, 2015 7:03:32 GMT andrewvanbeck said:

This looks like a lot of fun, although not ridiculously difficult like the old Horace games. The graphics are awesome.

Are my eyes deceiving me though, it looks like you are using a sprite mask, you gotta tell us how you did that!

Hi Andrew, first of all excuse me for being so late in replying you. I just read your post right now.

Thank you so much for liking the game! Yes, sprite masking is implemented in the first and fourth chapters because they have been scripted with La Churrera, not with AGD...

[andrewvanbeck]

Ahh, no worries - I thought(hoped) there was a way to cheat with AGD

[roland]

Thanks for sharing those games. They play well and look good too.

[alessandro]

Jul 3, 2016 11:22:02 GMT roland said:

Thanks for sharing those games. They play well and look good too.

Thanks for liking it (the games are actually parts of a whole, by the way)