Sunday 21 September 2008

Back on the Code Face - Chaos Caverns Redux

Chaos Caverns has been worked on (and off) since 2006. It was written because, quite simply, I wanted to write a good old-fashioned platformer in the style of Manic Miner.

And so it came to pass.

Some people liked it, some people didn't. It kind of depends on whether you played the games that it is based around. Classic games like Manic Miner, Blagger, Technician Ted and Chuckie Egg didn't skimp on the difficulty, and Chaos Caverns takes the same line. All of the levels can be beaten with practice, but getting through all the levels in one go is a real challenge.



Well, eventually I stopped development on Chaos Caverns as, to be honest, coding it wasn't fun anymore and I wanted to move on to other things. Around sixteen levels were completed for it, some based around the originals, some entirely new.

I'd always planned on having around 26 levels, many of them based on some of the other platform games of the time, but fell short of that goal. I've re-started development and have knocked out a set of "Chuckie Egg" themed levels (see the above screenshot).

My plan is to add new levels, drop some of the old ones and make some updates to the game code. I don't know how far I'll get, but it is nice to get back to coding something purely for the enjoyment of it.

I've no firm plans on any release dates yet, I'll have to see how things progress.

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