Wildfire
Help Mr.Bernt get to his cabin - alive!
You are an aerial firefighter and you want to help Mr.Bernt get to his cabin… alive! Do so by tactically extinguishing - and starting - fires! Make sure you don't let the cabin burn down as that would kinda defeat the point…
Controls: Z to grab/release things. X to idle (skip a turn). Arrows to move. Each button press counts for one turn.
Mr.Bernt will move towards his cabin once there is a path. Make sure he does not walk past a fire as his highly flammable clothes will cause a problem!
You can fast-forward (Z) or skip (X) the dialogue before the levels. Also you can press ENTER to access the menu; I've put in a "back to main menu" option which might be useful.
This game has been gradually getting there since the beginning of the month. I had an idea for the LowRezJam that I tried out for an 1hgj, and then realised for the LowRezJam.
Since then I wanted to expand the game with a level editor, which took a lot longer than I expected!
There are in-game tutorials, but here are some gifs to help:
Kill fire with water…
…or with a rock.
Sometimes you need to start a fire!
Level creation:
The new feature I've added to the game is the ability to create levels. Press right a couple of times in the main menu to access this feauture. Edit a level by pressing X to cycle through the available tiles, and pressing Z to place the current tile. In order to save a level, you need to play and complete it, give it a name and an author, and choose a code in case you ever want to edit it again. Note that the level is stored/identified by its name and author combined, so if you change the name of the level it will be saved as a new level.
PICO-8's limited controls do make this a little bit fiddly. In the edit mode, press ENTER to access the menu and get back to the main menu when you are done or want to try your level.
This feature is pretty cool (IMHO) because it's adding "cloud saves" to a PICO-8 game. The way it's done is by exploiting the GPIO flags that were added to PICO-8 presumably to be able to control simple lights on your Raspberry Pi or similar. Since the data needed to store a level is pretty light, I save it in these GPIO controls, which can then be read by the HTML5 app serving the PICO-8 cart. The data is then stored on my own server via a REST interface.
This means that any level you may create is available to play for all players via the "challenges" list! I can't wait to see what kind of crazy challenges will appear!
Comments (3)
Firstly the graphics are adorable. I love the music, it was exteremely well done. I wasn't sure how to restart a level so I squashed Mr. Bernt. I thought that was brilliant, sacrifices for the greater good. Yes I did also burn and decapitate him.
The way everything interacts is awesome, logs float in the water but rocks fill it up etc. Very nice attention to detail.
I thought this was really really well designed. A great concept that was well implemented. I've played every level there is currently and I'd play more if I could.
The level creation is great fun. I submitted my own level so hopefully it shows up :D
Overall this was probably my favourite entry, I really enjoyed everything about this. Great job :D
Wow that custom level thing is clever! It must have been a lot of work indeed. At first I found it quite cumbersome because of the (very) limited controls, but after a while I was comfortable enough to make my own contribution :) I would have preferred if we could pick tiles from a palette rather than switching between them all, but then again that means more code!
The gameplay itself is pretty fun, and the numerous little details and special situations make it full of potential. The first time I decapitated the guy made me laugh x) (and yes, it wasn't the last *evil laugh*) I could see this working as a bigger game, with a multitude of items to discover and experiment with throughout the levels… Something in the vein of McPixel maybe.
Anyway great job with this game, it feels like you really had to be creative to work around the Pico-8 limitations :)