Otters on a Plane

By Anders Carlsson

Genre: Strategy: Otter management

 
It gives me great pleasure to announce the second entry to the CGC 2013 Otter competition, and what a corker it is!

Otters on a Plane whisks us to the very plausible scenario in which you want to fill a plane with live otters.  The otters come in 4 different flavours – black, red and blue, and for some other (unexplained) reason they can only go into a cage of the same colour.  On occasion you get ‘purple’ otters, which can go into any colour of cage or will mate with an already caged otter – which obviously causes both to be removed and the cage made free.  So in this sense you can think of the purple otter as the game’s power up.

 

If all that wasn't barking mad enough then there’s the lawnmower.  I’m not too familiar with air freight, but I now assume that any cargo flight, instead of a hospitality trolley, has a lawnmower trundling down the aisle every so often.  If you activate the lawnmower while it passes through it destroys the adjacent otter, and the cage becomes one of random colour.

 

If you fail to manage your cages correctly and are unable to place your otter you will need to dispose of it, and you are allowed a total of 10 otters before the game is over.  Successfully place 18 otters and you get to do the whole thing all over again.  It’s worth it though, because OOAP contains fantastic use of UDGs and BEEP sounds….and is full of otters of course.

Keys- Space to place the otter, K to destroy said otter.

In summary I’m not sure how much of this game is down to chance or strategy, but it’s hilarious, totally insane and above all – CRAP.  It is also worth bearing in mind that the winner of the otter competition will (if I can still afford it at the end of the year) get a british otter sponsored in their name, so on balance we can turn a blind eye to the game's ottercidal content.

Thankyou Anders!

Tipshack: use the purple otter (ooh err) wisely, use it to fill the as yet most filled cage.  Try to avoid using the lawnmower but remove the most abundant otter if you have to.

HACKSACK:
                        Abundant otters: in line 22 change to LET OT = desired number of otters

                        Infinite otters: in line 50 change to LET OT =OT

                        Infinitely incrementing otters: in line 50 change to LET OT=OT+1

Download the game here and the instructions here.

On the Gloomy Side of Luna

By Anders Carlsson

Genre: Moon Comber

 

As per the instructions, G.S.O.L is so called after ‘a certain music album’ but has been slightly changed to avoid copyright infringement (Shady Side of the Satellite by the Rivettes?).  Quite right too, because we take copyright very seriously at the CGC.

The aim of the game is to guide the buggy around the moonscape using not one, but TWO keys, collecting valuable metals and fuel along the way.  You must also be careful to avoid mines and ‘objects that are worthless and nothing happens’.  How to do this?  Dunno, as all 4 possible objects are marked by question marks and controlled by the RND command.  So GSOL is a lambada with lady luck rather than an intense strategy game.

 

The game doesn’t autostart after loading, bonus points there.  So after typing RUN and ENTER the game starts, but be prepared for the menacing landscape that scrolls toward you.  So if you want a cup of tea or a sneaky chug before it actually reaches you then make it a quick one!  Having said that it does make quite nice use of the SCROLL function.  The fact that you lose fuel at every move, get so little of it to begin with, and rely on chance to get more means it’s impossible to actually get a fair game.

I’d file this under Cassette 50 material, a nice idea with flawed gameplay.  Well done Anders!

The Hi-Score challenge starts at 51km and 70 points.

Tipshack: Look ahead and take your chances (in life I mean).

HACK PACK: Immeasurable Fuel:  Remove everything before the PRINT command in line 105

Download the game here, the instructions here and the BASIN file here.

Also, I’m a bit under the weather at the moment and wanted to mess about with some code: here is a hacked version to be played with Emulator on full: Asteroid®isk.  Hope you don’t mind Anders.