Fin - 2020-08-25

Fin.

After some 4 months of lockdown and side project tinkering, Go Mummy! (renamed from Oh Mummy!) is complete and done.

I released it on the 14-August 2020 through itch.io and I’ve had some lovely feedback.

Planning for a Friday afternoon release, I asked the NextBASIC community if anyone would want to do some game testing - and I’m so glad I did. For all the testing that I had done along with Julie and the kids, I’d missed a couple of key issues (mostly around the high score wasn’t saving properly). I also had some great feedback from one individual and his 10 year old son which let me make some minor playback tweaks that I think really improved the game.

A couple of the last minute changes include:

• As soon as you reveal the archaeologist, it’s added to the right hand sidebar
• When you complete a level, the player is locked for 3 game cycles before it can move out - which avoids accidentally running right into a baddie
• Now there’s a gate on the exit that’s down when you start the game, and animates to unlock once you’ve got the archaeologist and the key - which gives a good visual cue that this where you need to head
• I made use of the shadow layer to make screen transitions slicker - this means the screen isn’t built up in front of the player, but instead snaps into view
• When a player gets kicked, I intentionally halt the game with a border flash to give a strong notification of something bad happening

I also then wrote detailed comments through the code so that anyone wanting to learn from the code might get a few tips here and there.

I know it’s no great feat but for a little side project I was able to create a game that was inspired by my own childhood gaming, and it’s been received really well (for a small community) with something like a 2:1 view to download ratio.

Here’s the final version: