This is tiny and brilliant. 4 Hour RPG is a randomly generated dungeon hacker made by Jan Willem Nijman for The Poppenkast’s friendly four hour competition. We picked it up via Indiegames, and it’s a riot. The Necromancer is best – I’d love to see this idea developed a little more with some serious player-defined options. The four scenarios require a particular level of character to play properly, so I’ve posted the controls and the relevant level instructions below the cut. A direct download is here.
WASD – Movement
Left click – attack
Right click – special move
Space – Level up
R – restart (random level)
F4 – full screen
ESC – quit
Recommended levels to play properly:
plains – 1, forest – 3/4, cave – 6/7, desert 9/10
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I’ve downloaded a few of the entries in this comp, and they’ve been too underdeveloped, but this one sounds like a winner!
Might have to have a gander at this over the weekend.
That’s actually pretty decent fun :D
Yeah, this has a lot of potential for expandability. A full-fledged robotron / roguelike hybrid would be very nifty.
@hydra9
Not surprising since there only given 48 hours, and I know it takes longer then that if you want anything other then a simple game.
oops 4 hours even less time, which means what they did here is quite good for such a short length of time they had to create it.
@Xercies:
I know my comment did sound a bit naive :) I was looking for something simple, but a couple of other entries seemed like they hadn’t got beyond creating a simple map and letting you wander round it.
@Lorc:
That would be brilliant.
This is off-topic, but here’s a game that was made in 3 hours and is one of the best things I’ve played in a while:
BlockOn! (by cactus)
Necros are totally imba and should be nerfed…
I get one of those evil ‘floating point overflow’ error messages.
“If only I had more than three hours left at work to play it.”
^^of course I’ve never really thought this…
Here at ‘4HRPGold’ We will level up your 4hourRPG character and get him through to the end game so you can forget the grind of holding down the space bar and just enjoy the phat loot only $4 per level.
SAND WORM AAAAAAAH SAND WORM
I like it. Pretty amazing for four hours of work. I’d like to see what could be done in a month by these guy(s).
Anyone recognize the programming suite he used to make the game? I’d like to take a look at it myself.
Of course if he actually hard coded this using Notepad in 4-6 hours I think I’m naming my first child after him.
@undead:
And if he did it in ASM, using vi, with a copy of Knuth I taped over his face, what then?
This game (and most games made in poppenkast 2-4 hour compos) was made with game maker.
It is gamemaker for sure. The F4 switch screen function, and F1 info screen funtion, is a classic :)
It is TRULY a GM game. The loading screen – GM. F4 for fullscreen – GM. F1 for help – GM.
I have the full version of GM myself, and it’s a good kit for starting game development.
Website – http://www.yoyogames.com
Gents, the Indiegames link is a bit broke (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/03/20/4-hour-rpg/friendly%20four%20hour%20competition)