If any comments are made on AGameAWeek games, they'll end up in this giant sprawling topic of feedback!

You can download Read Error A here, for Windows, play it in your browser via HTML5, and hopefully it'll be available on Razer Forge soon, unless they think it's broken

RSKGames

This game is very much inspired by Nintendo's wonderful WarioWare, which has appeared on GameBoy Advance, GameCube, DS and Wii.
I've loved these games since I played the *cough* totally legal download *slaps wrist* of the original Japanese version. If you can imagine trying to play this thing with Japanese text, not knowing what any of the little captions are, but still playing along anyway.. That's how I first experienced WarioWare, and bloody hell, did I love it!
I've bought and still own ALL the WarioWares that I Nintendo have released over in the UK.
I'm a WarioWare superfan, and ain't ashamed to admit it!
..I'm still annoyed that "Game'n'Wario" wasn't a proper WarioWare, and that WarioWare Twisted never got released over here.

For reference, all the games are created using simple default Amstrad CPC ascii-characters, the ones that are available when you turn the system on, and for the most part, stay true to the Amstrad's default colourscheme, too.

"Read Error A" is the message that would occasionally pop up when the Amstrad had misread a cassette, whilst trying to load it!
It was FAR too common, and resulted in you having to reload everything all over again.
Grrr!

-=-=-


Could've/should've been bigger, but deciding to add online scoreboards to EVERY game is what ultimately put a stop to things.


The glitch effect is only about 1/4 of what I originally intended. I actually reduced the effect because it made a lot of the games a heck of a lot harder.
Additionally, for a while, all the games were Dark Blue background and Bright Yellow ASCII Characters on top.
But the games were difficult enough without adding a little more colour into things. So, I used CPC's default Pen 2 and 3 colours to nake things a little more presentable!
(Although, they're not TRUE CPC Colours.. They're a little less garish!)


I do hope that people "get" how that works. I didn't bother explaining it, and should probably have added an arrow to it, or something..?
*shrugs*

Games

Fun Fact : The order of the games in the menu is also the order I added the games into the collection!


First game, and the original plan was to recreate classic Amstrad CPC type-ins!
On the original CPC type-in (from the included Manual), this was an example of using the "Frame" command, to create animations. The little fella would run across the screen, and it'd demonstrate the functionality of the command.
I wanted that to be the starting point. A minigame based on that, and potentially other little type-in things.
I didn't stick to that plan, and instead started throwing all kinds of oddities into the mix!


I originally had this a lot harder, but eventually decided that 10 seconds of fast-paced dodging was a little too much. Given that there are no other endings for this, it was either trim down the time, or make the game easier.
I opted to make things easier.


Having this randomly appear makes this game much harder than when you're prepared for it. This is something that WarioWare does particularly well.
I figured since the previous game was made easier, this one should probably evenn things out


If you haven't played SpikeDislike, now's probably a good time to do so. SpikeDislike3


The invisible wall was added to make things a little more cramped. If the area's too big, it becomes a time-challenge to simply get back and forth across the screen.
I should probably have drawn a wall..
Meh, hindsight!


For a while, this used the red bomb sprite instead of the gem. Since this is a mini version of the classic "Mad Bomber", that seemed like a sensible idea.
In practice, however, when you're playing the games at microgame speed, it became a task to try to remember to catch these particular bombs!!
Instead, they got Gem'i'fied, and it made things much more natural.


The entire collection is stuck drawing to a relatively small grid, but the gameplay still works at a larger one. In this case, the gameplay is roughly 800x450 pixels, whilst the drawing is only 25x14 grid references. This is what gives everything that exceedingly blocky style.
In this example, it makes things a little more blocky than I'd normally like, but I was determined not to break the Ascii-grid logic, so it stayed.
Incidentally, this is also where the missing game is..

Golf : Difficulty : Impossible! Similar to the Keep Up game, the ball and hole were at 800x450 resolution, whilst the drawing was within the 25x14 grid.
This made targetting the ball towards the hole an impossible task!
The game is still in the code, but I didn't think it was worth letting it be playable. It's a mess!


Aaah, HiRise..
I hated this game, growing up with my CPC. Mostly because the actual game is SO amazingly slow to play!
The helecopter would take about 5 seconds to make a single screen-pass, and the high-rise buildings would need multiple hits to destroy.
The game was slow as hell, and bored the pants off me.
I made it quicker!!!


Pah, "AI"!!
The invaders are on a simple array, and the array moves left and right. If any enemy touches the left or right of the screen, the direction is reversed.
Simple Space Invaders stuff, as it has been since the very beginning!


Again, we're doing really basic 80's Arcade AI, here.
This is a clone of Centipede, and the behaviour is as primitive here as it was there.
The centipede moves in a given direction, and turns around (and moves down a line) whenever it runs into a mushroom, or the side of the screen.
The old game AI is the simplest


This game gives you a slightly longer pause than the other games. It's not really noticable, but there's a brief delay before the timer kicks in.
I found that I, alarmingly often, mistook the start for the end!! Especially when I hadn't drawn the gem, and instead had a red and yellow chequered area at the end, which looked alarmingly like the player on the red time!!
There's a fair amount of tweaks to get it "just right"


I like this, too!
Originally planned to be a scrolling "Balloon Fight/Trip" style thing, I instead switched it out for a single screen flapping trip.
I feel like I could probably make something more worthwhile out of this.
Stay tuned!!


Killer hard!
In every WarioWare collection, there are games like this, that you dread popping up, because you ALWAYS seem to fail them!
I decided that this one should probably be that, since I hadn't really added one yet!
I ensured the game was "fair", and gave the game plenty of "GOTO" play tests, to be sure it wasn't a broken game.
Hopefully I've found the right balance between nice, and deadly


Much like "Get the Gems", this one needed shrinking down, as the full screen was far too much space to traverse.
Making the game automatically show the floor tiles was an interesting change. I originally had it so you needed to move, stop, tap the button, then decide based on that..
It was a LOT slower, and totally unplayable in the 10 second timer.
On the flip side, making that change also made it FAR too easy and fast.. You'll notice if playing on "GOTO" mode, that the timer is reduced at an alarming rate! This was to stop it getting really really dull, really really fast!


I tried my best to make the games as fair as possible, score wise.
For most games, you should find you're scoring approximately 70 points per round, and you get points based on how much time's left in the timer.
Some games (eg Survive) instead give a solid 75 points after the timer's depleted, since they play until the time runs out.
Other games (Destroy.. The Centipede clone) give you a more normal score. But for the most part, you should still be roughly earning a nice balanced score on those, too.

The scoring has to be more or less the same average amount per game, so that when strung together in random-mode, the player doesn't get a super-score just because a certain game pops up!
I spent a fair amount of time tryinng to find the right balance between difficulty and scoring, and .. hopefully I've done a good job of it..


I was in two minds whether to make the screenshots "perfect" and "clean", so the glitches are unexpected.
In the end, though, I like how the screenshots turned out, especially the "Boxart"

Click for Biggy


I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Now, back to those highscores!!