New Game - Rescue Lander

[dpagett]

And now for something completely different... My third outing with AGD and I decided to take a departure from the 'Page' series of games. I wanted to make a lunar lander game, something simple and something that looked like it was made 30 years ago. So I came up with 'Rescue Lander'.

The city is been bombarded by meteors. It could be the prelude to an alien invasion so do your best to save as many souls as possible. Fly your rescue lander through the city and beyond collecting as many men, women and children as you possibly can. Collect 3 pockets of people per screen to advance to the next level, but be careful, don’t land anywhere other than on the landing platforms, everything else will damage your ship. Don’t run our of fuel either as that will cost you a life.

The idea is simple, but the levels get progressively more difficult. Your lander will fall towards the ground if you do not apply thrust, gravity is your enemy.

Keys are 'Q' to thrust and 'O' to move left and 'P' to move right. (Also Kempson and Sinclbowel relaxant joystick compatible)

You get about one minute before running out of fuel, if the fuel gauge registers empty your ship will be destroyed. While this might not be an issue in the early levels it can become more of a problem later on. Any remaining fuel will count towards a bonus upon completing each level.

Once you have saved three pockets of people from the level the landing platform on the right side of the screen will change colour indicating you can advance to the next level. Simply land on it to advance and receive a bonus for any remaining fuel you have left.

Please don't expect cutting edge graphics, or speaker pumping background music. The plan was to produce a game that looks like it might have hit the shelves in 1983. Special thanks to Jonathan Cauldwell who created and continues to update AGD. 

Download TAP Here 

Download SNZ Here

Update 27/02/15
The links above have been updated as there was a couple of bugs in the original release, the screen displayed twice on starting a new game and the background was black between games and it should have been blue.  A WOS member fixed this and also modded the original to include an arrow on the right side of the screen indicating where the next meteor would be appearing.

Download easyTAP version here

 

[sendy]

It's a fun game, but most of my deaths are due to having to go down the right side of the screen, where the rocks like to appear on top of you. Perhaps some extra logic in the spawning code is required, to stop them spawning in a region around the player when they get to the rightmost quarter of the screen?

[dpagett]

Feb 22, 2015 15:12:16 GMT sendy said:

It's a fun game, but most of my deaths are due to having to go down the right side of the screen, where the rocks like to appear on top of you. Perhaps some extra logic in the spawning code is required, to stop them spawning in a region around the player when they get to the rightmost quarter of the screen?

Thanks Sendy, It was a dilemma I realised pretty early on, I found I was getting killed a lot on the right side of the screen and wondered if I should attempt to fix it.  However I think the simplicity of the gameplay coupled with it's addictive nature was reason enough to leave the random spawning in place.  Also I was not looking on creating lots and lots of different levels so I wanted the game to have a moderate to high difficulty level (Hard for me!).  I found the best way to progress was to wait just away from the edge and try and time the passage down before the next meteor disappeared of the left edge of the screen.  But even then I grant you that it is very frustrating if you get killed. 

[dpagett]

Updated the original links in the first post with a couple of bug fixes, also added a link in the original post which displays little arrows on the right side of the screen indicating where then next meteor is going to appear from. Special thanks to WOS member Roebne who did this off his own back.
He is also responsible for the bugfix version.