Vegan Hell

Long time no game-jam. Since I started to work on Firebat – Revolution I haven’t got any time to make stuff for HEJ. Not even for a while after its release, as constant fixes and some new features took up most of my time. I started something three times: one small game for I don’t even remember what theme called Robocop Solitaire, one small game for the theme Split-screen called The Split Reality Machine, and one for Space and Card themes called Battleram. I haven’t finished anything due to some technical problems that emerged and that took me to a South Park episode with my free time “Aaaand it’s gone”.

But now, finally for the 2025 January challenge, for the themes Your Favorite Song and Vegan I can present to you:

My first idea was to make a game where you can walk forward, and a bit backwards, there are giant watermelons on the top of the screen looking up and down to the rhythm of the Infernal Galop from Orpheus in Hell (aka: Can-Can). If they spot you, they start to follow you with gaping, sharp teeth filled mouths. I even came up with the idea of the devil being the narrator, saying things like “Ah a new guest in our humble abode! Let’s see your sins… mhm, ok, that’s abysmal but ok… what?… WHAT? You were a vegan?! Now we have a problem! You can have one guess why!” and then the devil is revealed to be a big red paprika. 😀 I barely started when I realized I would need a vision cone for this to work properly, then for that platforms that can block part of this vision cone. I had some thoughts as how to do this, but I realized that could be too much work, so I came up with another idea, a more arcade gameplay.

I kept Orpheus as the main protagonist, gave him a hardhat (when jumps, it’s a power jump) and hard boots (when falling AND Down is pressed, it’s a power fall), 3 types of platforms to headbutt and stomp. One is a brick platform. it can break, then regenerate after a short time (not when a player character is in it though, but it can kill a monster). One diamond platform, that only jumps up a little, knocking anything on it in the air. And last but not least one golden platform, that has food in it: a fruit – apple, banana or pineapple – or some meat product – ham, hamburger or hot-dog -, and this food can be knocked out for monsters to eat. There is a metronome on the GUI and it’s 4th beat will change the food type to its opposite, so the player has to be careful when a golden platform is hit. After that there’s an 8 second cooldown before a new food appears in it.

The monsters can eat up any food laying around. Meat products makes them stronger, fruit weakens them, and finally kills them. The green jello is level 1, dies from fruit, and the big red one is level 9, eating a meat product makes it drop a level 1 monster. I even named the monsters, though those names never appear in the game: Jilly, Blobby, Crabby, Squidy, Oysty, Leggy, Starry, Speedy and Floaty-Meaty. Their abilities can be some plus speed, then shooting, jumping and dropping bombs.

Monsters spawn at the top of the screen, from pipes. The numbers show the level of the next monster (L) and the time it will spawn (T). The bottom exits are for monsters to reach: they will come back on the top +1 level higher. The starting level is usually 1, but when the song repeats, this level can go up (pre-set in the levels, this is a hidden number, but not hard to remember when someone listens to the information on the GUI).

Orpheus has 9 lives, and after touching a monster, hit by a projectile or blown up by a pearl bomb looses 1, and gets a short invulnerability time. Loosing all lives means Game Over. But as the player kills 9 monsters, a power-up will appear. There are 3 of them, following each other: Power of Liva: this gives Orpheus a life when in top shape, 2 if in middle and 3 if in the low. Power of Vega will spawn a fruit on every monster (making them level down…), and another 8 at pre-set locations. Power of Waka will turn Orpheus into a big hardhat, and can move around Pac-man style, eating food (for speed and big score) and monsters, as they try to run away. Every new Waka will make the monsters faster. In this form, Liva always give only one life to Orpheus, Vega will spawn fruits as before, but as the monsters cannot eat when Waka is active and their spawn rate is faster, much fruit can be on the screen for the player to collect, or to leave for the next round. Waka will give Waka a Waka extension, but for an ever shorter time. After it ends, Orpheus returns invulnerable for a short time, then can deal with the remaining monsters, and their elevated speed.

During the HEJ meetup I got a feedback (besides that the game is kind of hard :D) that why I didn’t implement a coop mode. Well yeah, why… so I did just that. Hence Adam (from Imre Madách’s The Tragedy of Man), as Player 2 entered the fray! Now, in the main menu players can set the number of players to 2, and play together on reaching new high-scores. They use the same pool of lives, the same amount of fruits spawn, but Waka will turn both players to Waka form.

I still have some stuff for the player(s) to find out: not just the strategies to keep going as far as humanly possible, but that the bombs can be kicked around, and if a player kicks it, it turn to a pomegranate, and that cannot hurt the players, but level down the monsters, give points for broken brick platforms and they knock out only fruits from golden platforms – even when the icon on the platform is a meat product.

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