MORE MINIMALL?

This game was originally built for a "minimal" themed game jam hosted by TinkerSmith on the Flowlab Forums . 

The stipulations were something like this: 

10x10 playing field.
10 objects max (the fewer the better).
10 colors max.
4.0 pixel grid.
minimal sfx and music ok.
10 days to do it

I started out trying to create an "upgrade" the shopping mall game where you had to click on the shoppers to get them into the stores. 

After a couple of false starts (a 10-day jam is not the time to invent a new game style I'd never coded before), I came up with Minimall (get it?) Mayhem. A lot of the initial graphics remained the same, but the game totally changed to a classic struggle of Man vs. Robot. I named the player character Magnus after the Servotron song "Death of Magnus" (which itself is based on Magnus, Robot Fighter, a fictional superhero, appearing in comic books created by writer/artist Russ Manning in 1963.)

(If you haven't heard Servotron, I highly recommend you give the whole album a try.)

The game turned out reasonably playable. I liked the limitation of only shooting sideways and the noises of the shoppers running out of the mall doors to escape. It's beatable and has a beginning intro and a win and lose ending. All-in-all I consider it one of my more successful "mini-jam" creations, but I always envisioned an expanded arena for robot battling. 

I've teamed up with Tinkersmith again to begin the proof of concept phase of a Minimall sequel: DEADMALL

I know "dead" might imply "zombies," but fear not, the "murderous Security Bots gone berserk" are all the challenge you'll need without bringing the undead into the mix. Fight through an array of new and dangerous robots while you try to rescue the shoppers trapped inside the mall. Take the fight outside to continue the battle in the parking lot and find a way to shut down these rogue robots for good. 

Here are some concepts for the new enemies: The Bomb-Dropping Hover Bot, The Devastating Missile Bot, The Classic Sentry Bots and the small but fierce Laser Bot. Hunt them down and stop them from destroying the mall!

You'll notice slightly different music in DEADMALL than in MINIMALL, but I approached the themes in the same way. I assigned the middle letter of the alphabet (M) to MIDDLE C on a piano and then extrapolated the rest of the ABCs up and down chromatically from there. Minimall's theme spells out M-I-N-I-M-A-L-L and Deadmall's theme spells out D-E-A-D-M-A-L-L. I want to do more with this concept for writing music and maybe even create an app where you can enter in text and hear the "song" it makes. 

What other types of robots would you like to fight against? What sort of weapon upgrades/abilities could Magnus get? How should the robots be defeated for good? (Currently thinking about collecting parts to complete a machine that will wipe out all the robots. Or find all the lost program files and upload them to a central computer? ) Whatever it is, I hope it isn't a:

Stay tuned for more updates as construction continues. I'm already battling "scope creep" but I think it's manageable. I'm leaving it up to Tink to develop the random mall layout generator that remembers all the rooms so you can return to them. Updates as they happen! 

Cheers! 

todorrobot