March 26, 2011

Doctor West v1 released

Yes, it's finally here. After a long period of laziness (or possible lack of creative energy) the first playable version of Dr. West is available. The game is about a half-crazy genius bent on proving that the dead human body can be reanimated after injecting a properly prepared chemical solution into its veins. The good doctor has a working theory but not enough practice. And therein lies the problem - he needs more specimens (the fresher the better) in his lab to mix and test new solutions. But where to get them? One thing that comes to mind is the local cemetery - and that is the first source of specimens available. The other one is much more gruesome...

The manual link in the game currently leads to a blank wiki page (I will make one asap) so I will explain the game mechanics here. The game consists of an overhead view of the town where the doctor lives. There are three special buildings - his laboratory, cemetery and the police station. Pressing SPACE key will end the current turn. The goal of the game is to raise the theory parameter up to 10 which is done by successful experiments. After some time (or possibly right on the next turn) the suitable bodies will start to appear in the cemetery. Clicking on the body will move it into the laboratory and on the next turn the doctor will mix a new solution and test it. The laboratory can hold four bodies at once.

If the experiment was successful, the new knowledge of the theory is gained and the reanimated body will probably be set loose on the streets of town. The reanimated are dumb monsters, they will randomly move around until they see a human. At this moment they will attack and possibly kill him providing a fresh body. The body quality (which is shown by color and BQ parameter in the message bar) affects the result of an experiment. If the murder (or even the attack in some cases) is witnessed by another human, he will alert the authorities about it. The police comes in 2 turns and will try to put down the reanimated. If the police comes too close to the laboratory, its suspicion will rise each turn. When suspicion reaches three points, the game is over - the evil deeds of the doctor have been found out.

Both the police officers and the reanimated have more than 1 life point. Each time a police officer hits the reanimated, he removes 1 life point. The reanimated is significantly weaker though and not always manages to score a successful hit in a fight with the police. Upon attack the officer will call for backup, so the area around will quickly fill up with the police. There are a total of 10 officers that can be on the map at any given time. When the reanimated is put down (and no others are seen), the police will patrol around for some time then leave the scene.

You are able to exert some control over the reanimated movement by putting markers on map. This is done by clicking on any walkable tile. The marker is shown as a red "!" symbol. If any reanimated is within 2 tiles of the marker, it will try to move there. The marker is destroyed when reanimated steps on it and it will also be ignored when reanimated is busy trying to kill humans. At the start of the game only one marker can be put on the map. The amount grows with gaining knowledge of the theory allowing to control more reanimated. Though you still won't be able to control each reanimated separately.

That's about it at the moment. This is the first version which is playable and I need feedback to make it better. Don't hesistate to try it out and tell me what you think here or in the game feedback thread.

In other news: I noticed that Opera 11 plays Black Obelisk (and Dr. West which is based on the same HTML5 tech) well. Last time I checked (it was Opera 10 I think) it couldn't display text in canvas. Hooray for more HTML5 compatibility.

2 comments:

  1. Nice! Your games are the only ones that are letter-character-based and are able to make me care and interested at the same time.

    Your plots are awesome!

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