Raiders Of The Lost Potato

by gizmo
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.04
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.18
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.18
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.35
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.69
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.50
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.97
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★88%
Potatomonster stole all potatoes from Pinkbunnyland, help Pinkbunny to retrieve em all!

This is my april 2013 #LD48 entry

As an artist (and not a programmer) who mainly deals with lot's of polygons and high-res imagery all day i wanted to approach art in games from the most minimal, basic angle i could think of. So no Photoshop, no Softimage, Mudbox or Zbrush. My weapon of choice was a texteditor (Pluma/gedit), a palette of whopping 6 predefined colors and a couple of arrays. So, pixeling a spriteanimation felt a bit like editing several excel sheets at once...

It was quite a monkish experience and i enjoyed it a lot.

If the resulting game is a piece of minimal art surely depends on your personal viewing angle, but i can assure you the process of crafting was indeed under quite minimal conditions :D

\o gizmo

screenshot

Comments37

lulzfish_429 Apr 2013, 03:13
I'm having trouble with your Web URL, it was working earlier.
Scott McBee29 Apr 2013, 04:03
This is pretty great. The art style fits perfectly without copping out to geometric shapes, and I love the glow everything had. This seems like it would have made a perfect intellivision game.
CagedRat
CagedRat29 Apr 2013, 04:09
I like the CRT look. Pinkbunny looks like Pinkduckhead to me. First thing I tried to do was eat one of the purple things.
lfpetrini
lfpetrini29 Apr 2013, 04:30
Had some issues to access the website but it worked after some tries. The game is fun and the art is great :)
Spiridios
Spiridios29 Apr 2013, 04:38
Love the art style - more the CRT effect than the actual graphics. I like your interpretation of the theme.
Tozy
Tozy29 Apr 2013, 05:01
I like the glowing effect!
Brian Corr29 Apr 2013, 06:23
This is very goodlooking. Reminds me of Paganitzu (a very old PC game which I loved as a boy). i love the glow.

Nice work buddy
svenardo29 Apr 2013, 06:25
Very well done. As a life long boulder dash fan it's jarring not to be able to pick up the diamonds ;). Enjoyed it a lot and would like to have a way to return to the last screen I was at on reload.
swizzcheez29 Apr 2013, 06:25
Nice touch with the 80's style monitor blur.
svenardo29 Apr 2013, 06:27
Of course, after writing that, I got to the end screen ;)
gizmoauthor29 Apr 2013, 06:28
@brian corr: paganitzu was my main inspiration! i even planned enemies like the snakes, but i ran out of time.. i will finish this game outside of the compo and put more levels in once i fetched some sleep :D
loxo29 Apr 2013, 06:29
I don't know why, but the graphics reminds me of the 1983 digger game. Maybe it's the diamonds. Great!
gizmoauthor29 Apr 2013, 06:31
@svenardo: hehe, i thought it might be fun to reverse it: collect the potatoes/boulders and leave the jewelry lying around.. pink bunnies have no use for diamonds :)
Crazi45629 Apr 2013, 08:02
Was fun! Potatoes!!!
Tanius29 Apr 2013, 11:40
Can't seem to find the page
gizmoauthor29 Apr 2013, 15:07
The pageloading errors should be fixed now - Sorry for that!
Merkoth29 Apr 2013, 16:22
Love the graphics and plays well. Nice job!
timtipgames
timtipgames29 Apr 2013, 16:27
ahhh the good old sokoban times... nothing too new here, but I liked the graphics :)
kewry29 Apr 2013, 16:43
LD the only type you get the potatoes instead of the diamonds!
Nice puzzle, love the blurry effect!
SaintHeiser30 Apr 2013, 09:14
Cheap and cheerful=)
But not bad at all. Good luck, man!
RealyUniqueName2 May 2013, 17:11
Perhaps you should add "restart level" button
Eternal_Rest3 May 2013, 02:54
It reminds me of the game built in to my old television.

Its a bit easy tho, i got to the end in less than 3mins.
GeorgeBroussard3 May 2013, 06:17
Good art and retro style. Nice entry for 48 hours.

Funny you mention Paganitzu :) We published that game in the early 90s and I was thinking of that the whole time I was playing this. Keith Schuler (who made it) works on Borderlands today.
jacklehamster
jacklehamster3 May 2013, 08:26
Cute game, and I like how you made it CRT style.
Now the puzzles, they are too easy, and add more diversity.
free_napalm4 May 2013, 13:55
I could finally play it, and I like it. It reminds me of Adventures of Lolo and other NES puzzle games. It is quite easy, but I had great fun speedrunning on my first try.
sP0CkEr26 May 2013, 04:33
great way to use the theme in your design of the game -- too bad there was no music -- great effort!
Martin_Monosys6 May 2013, 20:43
Nice game, cute looks, needs some sound! :) A bit short, too, but what's there is rather good!
Uhfgood6 May 2013, 23:38
Well done, nice way to be minimalistic. Even though the blurring was interesting, it just looked like someone smeared Vaseline over my screen.
Alexander
Alexander9 May 2013, 01:21
The ending was cool!
naufr4g09 May 2013, 23:25
Really like graphics (expecially CRT effect) and the gameplay.
Maybe levels are a bit too easy, game needs more challenging ones!
Misfit15 May 2013, 20:11
Retro puzzles forever! CRT effect is awesome!
voxel18 May 2013, 09:35
I _loved_ this. Have to admit I didn't realise it was a bunny, but that's part of the charm of simple, abstract graphics, they're many things to many people. Would play a longer version of this
gizmoauthor19 May 2013, 00:32
@GeorgeBroussard i _loved_ your early titles! i remember playing Pharao's Tomb for hours on end back in the days... As an hommage to all you guys at Apogee and episodic gaming in general i decided to turn this game into a small trilogy. I just finished the first episode, featuring 15 levels, enemies, sound, a narrative and finally a possibility to reset a level :)

-> http://www.pixelz.de/pcave1.exe (or use the link above)
fermcg19 May 2013, 01:10
I liked it :D
cardboard20 May 2013, 23:48
I really like the blurred graphics. It makes me feel like I'm playing on an old CRT monitor or TV. My only complainst are the game felt too short and the puzzles never became difficult enough. I'm about to give the Post-Comp version a try though, so I'm pretty sure you've addressed these things.
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