DashBlast
08-02-2015, 07:28 AM
link
Some number of years ago (four or five now, can't really remember) I was sitting on an IRC channel talking about video game stuff. It was then one of the regulars put up a link to a Dropbox page containing a simple JavaScript game by the name of Walkpunch. It presented itself as a text adventure, and your options were constrained to two buttons: one reading 'Walk' and the other reading 'Punch'. The premise was simple enough: explore a world and beat up enemies by walking and punching only. It invited some clever writing and creative gameplay, but it was otherwise lacking.
I took it upon myself to develop my own version of the game, lovingly dubbed RunGun. RunGun had its own little visual quirks to it: walking into a dark area or mistakenly shooting out the lights made the page background turn black, boss battles now had health counters, and you had to manage your ammo through exploration, puzzles, and battles. Even as Walkpunch fell to the wayside and was forgotten, RunGun saw updates and additions from me for almost four years - even as the original IRC channel it started on totally dissolved.
It was definitely a much more interesting take on the game, but looking back on it years later, could use improvement. Having limited bullets restricted the number of actions and paths a player could take, and triggering the funny easter egg content punished the player by making them lose bullets. Boss battles were simply waiting for cues to attack, with the interesting mechanisms buried behind ambiguous text clues. It didn't make sense in hindsight for a core mechanic to punish the player as such - especially since running out of bullets reset the page, putting you back at the beginning.
I thus now bring DashBlast to the table, the link located above. After re-writing some of the underlying tech to be more acceptable in programming circles, I now aim to improve the game with better progression and feedback in boss battles. I figured I might as well post it here since public exposure will force me to keep a better changelog, and some of you fine folks might get a kick out of it. Feel free to play it through and tell of your hilarious endeavors as you try to navigate to your local gun show.
Currently the game only features one big boss battle and it ends when you get outside the house, but I'm still looking for answers to these questions if you can:
- Does the text read well? Any typos or poor phrasings?
- Should the flavor text be long, short, or an artful mix of the two?
- Are the boss battles clear enough to be quickly understood?
- Do the health and damage mechanics fit in?
- Is there a sense of progression with the game?
Feel free to drop your feedback in topic, on IRC, or privately. I'm just looking to do another long-term feel-good project for shits and giggles, but I'd like to bring it up to my standard of quality I like to maintain.
You can also check out the original RunGun by replacing 'dashblast' with 'rungun' in the URL.
Some number of years ago (four or five now, can't really remember) I was sitting on an IRC channel talking about video game stuff. It was then one of the regulars put up a link to a Dropbox page containing a simple JavaScript game by the name of Walkpunch. It presented itself as a text adventure, and your options were constrained to two buttons: one reading 'Walk' and the other reading 'Punch'. The premise was simple enough: explore a world and beat up enemies by walking and punching only. It invited some clever writing and creative gameplay, but it was otherwise lacking.
I took it upon myself to develop my own version of the game, lovingly dubbed RunGun. RunGun had its own little visual quirks to it: walking into a dark area or mistakenly shooting out the lights made the page background turn black, boss battles now had health counters, and you had to manage your ammo through exploration, puzzles, and battles. Even as Walkpunch fell to the wayside and was forgotten, RunGun saw updates and additions from me for almost four years - even as the original IRC channel it started on totally dissolved.
It was definitely a much more interesting take on the game, but looking back on it years later, could use improvement. Having limited bullets restricted the number of actions and paths a player could take, and triggering the funny easter egg content punished the player by making them lose bullets. Boss battles were simply waiting for cues to attack, with the interesting mechanisms buried behind ambiguous text clues. It didn't make sense in hindsight for a core mechanic to punish the player as such - especially since running out of bullets reset the page, putting you back at the beginning.
I thus now bring DashBlast to the table, the link located above. After re-writing some of the underlying tech to be more acceptable in programming circles, I now aim to improve the game with better progression and feedback in boss battles. I figured I might as well post it here since public exposure will force me to keep a better changelog, and some of you fine folks might get a kick out of it. Feel free to play it through and tell of your hilarious endeavors as you try to navigate to your local gun show.
Currently the game only features one big boss battle and it ends when you get outside the house, but I'm still looking for answers to these questions if you can:
- Does the text read well? Any typos or poor phrasings?
- Should the flavor text be long, short, or an artful mix of the two?
- Are the boss battles clear enough to be quickly understood?
- Do the health and damage mechanics fit in?
- Is there a sense of progression with the game?
Feel free to drop your feedback in topic, on IRC, or privately. I'm just looking to do another long-term feel-good project for shits and giggles, but I'd like to bring it up to my standard of quality I like to maintain.
You can also check out the original RunGun by replacing 'dashblast' with 'rungun' in the URL.
![[Image: c48AoKl.png?1]](https://i.imgur.com/c48AoKl.png?1)