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Tunneler's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #17 | 2.404 | 3.400 |
| Platform Usage | #17 | 2.828 | 4.000 |
| Fun | #20 | 1.414 | 2.000 |
| Game Design | #20 | 1.556 | 2.200 |
| Overall | #20 | 2.051 | 2.900 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Reviewer Notes - Required
Apple I ASM type-in, tested on Apple1js.
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Comments
Interesting platform for an entry. I kinda get how you play, I managed to copy paste the code and run and things were scrolling. Then with the arrows I could move a thing as it was printing text. It's very close down to the bottom of the screen, so you can't see if you crash in time (I guess when I hit certain characters I do crash). Isn't very intuitive to play to be honest.
I am not joking when I say this is the best action game this platform has ever seen. It is the only action game this platform has ever seen. Because you can only emit characters, one per frame, at the bottom of the screen, in order. Obviously I would have placed the player further up the screen, except you literally can't.
The compromise was to move the obstacles. They appear (and end) before you hit them... underground. You are hitting the cellar as you dig underneath this Chilean squiggle of a kingdom.
Admittedly it'd be better-off moving the collision one row closer and relying on longer shadows for reaction time.
I really tried to play this game, but I failed.
I will leave it unrated.
I got the game to load, but I wasn't sure how to move around. What are the controls? If you could post them on the itch page, it would help modern players who aren't familiar with this system.
It's the left and right keys. Which... do not appear on the virtual keyboard, huh. Or on Woz's machine. Or on most replica builds, apparently. God dangit. I really gave myself the worst mix of deeply archaic problems and modern ridiculous oversights.
Patch for <> keys:
444: AC
456: AE
300: A9
I’m not sure I did everything right. For starters, mention that “reset” is the top right key on the keyboard :)
I pasted the data, entered 300R and then it seemed to print empty lines for while, then returning to the prompt. R again this time seemed to run the game as expected. Is it right, you have 4 columns scrolling on the left side, with your character (Sir Colon) directable left/right. A bit further down a bit of code seemed to scroll by, and then I was suddenly killed by spaces :)
I’m not sure if I got everything right, so i refrain from voting.
That sounds about right. Graphics are, to put it gently, limited.
I had the extra line below the code because the site's copy-paste is a little shaky on line endings. But I can see how that would cause other problems. A semicolon would eat anything typed before hitting Enter. A colon inserts more hex, or... treats an address as reading from tape? I don't want to end with a 300R, because the game starts right up, and the Load interface obscures it.
Ending with a 300 in the buffer should better handle whatever people do with my vague instructions.
In my defense (for the instructions, unrelated to the game) it is a stretch to say this machine had published software. Concise explanations are a step above providing a soldering diagram.
You hit things below the ground floor because you're underground.
Apple I !!! Weren’t these all kits sold by woz or something? Do you have one? I think I’d like to build a clone board at some point. I have an AppleIIgs, do you know if it happens to be backwards compatible and able to run your game? If so I’ll definitely type it in the monitor :)
Someone on reddit built a very clean replica, and posted a mediocre "digital rain" effect from The Matrix. I started a quick little effort to improve it and that got wildly out of hand. After a week, the resulting discussion of speed limitations concluded that the Apple I can print exactly one letter per frame. It is physically incapable of more. There is only one control character: the newline / carriage-return. Even a simple game at interactive speeds would be impossible. Right? Well. You can probably guess how my brain responds to the word "impossible."
I don't know how directly compatible the Apple II's ROM is. But where "20 EF FF" appears, the game expects to print the contents of the A register and then wait one frame. So insert... it feels wrong to call anything on 1970s hardware a polyfill. But point those JSRs elsewhere as-needed.
If it just prints characters as fast the Apple II is able, don't blink.