March Of The Minotaurs (2019 Byte-Off Dealie)

Bucket Mouse

Active member
Introducing my 2019 Byte-Off submission....MARCH OF THE MINOTAURS!

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Can you successfully sneak from one end of this maze to the other, while avoiding the massive minotaurs that roam its passages? Then can you do it eight times in a row? You've got five chances to find out!

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Download the MARCH OF THE MINOTAURS PACKAGE by heading to THIS LINK! It's got two versions....one that's the official contest submission, and one UNCUT VERSION for the cool among you only! (Play the uncut version first. Or exclusively.)

http://www.platypuscomix.net/tz/MarchOfTheMinotaurs.zip

This game started as SPEED BUN, a game whose concept was Pac-Man mixed with Sonic...the goal was to collect everything as quickly as possible. Both you and the enemies moved at hyperspeed, and you were supposed to be able to jump over them to avoid them. This wasn't doable on NES, so the project kind of warped as I tinkered with what I COULD do.

Speed Bun was what he sounds like....an anthropomorphic bun, "The Fastest Bread Product In Slovokia." In between levels were peroidic appearances from Dogturd the Dastardly, a sinister pile of dog waste who would say something suitably villainous like "Hey kids! Kill your parents! Ha ha ha!" and "I want to give EVERYONE AIDS!" When the game finally ended and the credits rolled, you realized Speed Bun and Dogturd never actually met or interacted in any way. Dogturd had no importance to the plot and affected nothing; he was just.....there.

I could have still done that, but I realized the punchline was too subtle for most people to get unless I specifically pointed it out, and "a joke isn't funny if you have to explain it." There is no talking dog poop in the game.

As for the game you're ACTUALLY playing, I was adjusting the difficulty up to the very end. I couldn't decide whether open or linear mazes were better. In the end I went with more open ones, but I can still only see the flaws. Any compliments would be appreciated.

My lofty ambitions were to submit THREE games and REALLY blow people away, but time and life made that impossible. This will likely be the only submission. I still want to see if I can pull my third idea together into some kind of running form before the deadline.
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
Played and finished it today! Really good game. It's my kind of game (arcade style)! Well made, interesting story.
I had a great time playing it. On my top 10 list!
Congrats, Bucket Mouse!
 
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