I've been playing a lot of Spelunky with my boys lately. We finally completed the secret ending by defeating Yama in Hell, then did "Speed-lunky" where you beat the game in under 8 mins. All this gave me a lot to consider about the core tenets of "Rogue-likes" and compelling game design in-general.

Naturally, I wanted to try my hand at making a Roguelike for my latest axe-throwing project, which led to the creation of "Corona Rogue" at USAxeClub.

You get a randomly generated set of 15 "rooms" of 3 types:

1. Randomly placed coronavirus molecule you have to hit with your axe
2. Item room (various permanent and non-permanent upgrades like: Vaccine [revives you if you miss], Hand Sanitizer [gives you a point multiplier for successful target hits], Quarantine [lets you skip a round], Face-mask [multiplies the # of options available in item rooms], Microscope [zooms in on the COVID-19 molecule making it easier to hit], etc.
3. Boss room (there's a mini-boss somewhere on floor 2, then a final boss in the final room)

To simulate "perma-death" (a roguelike staple) any misses make you start the game over (unless you have a vaccine).

The coolest thing, though, is that there's a "secret ending" where, if you have the right item, and do things in a very-specific order, you get caught in a time vortex and travel through time back to November 2019 to slay "Patient Zero" aka: "The Wuhan Bat" who shows up with a bunch of armor layers for you to knock off with your axe. Essentially, you can prevent Coronavirus from ever happening! This is a very cathartic experience, trust me...

This is the first "original" axe-throwing game on my web-socket platform and it feels like exploring a new frontier. I can't wait to have time to make another game...

Speaking of games, I saw another developer post that he really enjoyed the book "The Making of Prince of Persia" - So I went to buy it and found a bunch of other "History of Video Games" books. I just finished "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" about how Al Gore definitely did NOT create the Internet. I'm half-way through "Masters of Doom" about John Carmack and John Romero (creators of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3d, and then Doom). Then it's on to Sid Meier's memoir "A Life in Computer Games" about the creator of Civilization. Then "Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings" about the rise and fall of Sierra (some of my favorite games ever).

Finally, I'm about to pour CONCRETE in my front yard for a retaining wall foundation. There's so much to learn about doing this "right" - and I'm sure my pour will be pretty sucky... but this is how we learn right? Me and the fam dug out where the previous wall was collapsing, then I built the wooden "forms" and I just dumped a bunch of gravel into the bottom of the forms as a barrier between the concrete and the ground. Next is to mix the concrete and dump it in (with some rebar bars to reinforce it horizontally), level it, wait for it to partially set, take off the forms, smooth it out, backfill around the concrete and wait for it to fully set up. Then I'll have a foundation I can stack retaining wall blocks on that will, hopefully, be perfectly flat and easy to stack on and never fall over again...

Thanks for dropping by!

P.S. I'm still finishing up the Castle Crashing the Beard remake, just need to finish the achievements system which requires me learning a bit about the Newgrounds API for Javascript, then putting in all the SFX, Voice-acting, and music (hopefully that goes quickly). I want to dedicate most of my Christmas break to it... ideally release it before 2021, but we'll see!