Inspired by Action Adventures as well as
fast-paced fantasy shooters like Heretic/Hexen.
StarQuest is a top-down action
dungeon crawler for the Vectrex. You play as a
wizard navigating a dungeon made up of levels
connected by portals, fighting enemies,
collecting keys and powerups and unlocking new
paths towards a final battle.
The most notable feature is a
sequence-based spellcasting system, giving the
player a huge toolkit of tactical options. The
current spellbook includes a lightning bolt,
dragon's breath, area repel, decoy, slow,
freeze and two types of teleport. The design
intent is that each spell is genuninely useful
in different situations, so players can
develop their own approach rather than
spamming a basic projectile over and over.
The control scheme is also a
deliberate departure from the rotation and
thrust scheme found in many classic Vectrex
titles, instead allowing for instantaneous
movement in any direction using the analog
joystick.
The dungeon features several
enemy types with distinct behaviors: chasers,
snipers that can only be hit during certain
frames of their animation, chargers,
teleporting enemies launching homing
projectiles, berserkers that become more
dangerous as they take hits and rotating blade
constructs.
Many portals require keys to unlock, which can
be found around other levels or dropped by
enemies, rewarding exploration. Boss
encounters are planned.
How To
Play
Move the Hero by
pushing the joystick in the
desired direction of movement.
Pressing button 1
locks the aim direction and begins
casting a spell.
When in spellcasting
mode enter a sequence of inputs
using buttons 2,3 and 4 (referred
to as A, B and C until more
appropriately wizardly names are
found), followed by pressing
button 1 again to launch the
spell.
The current spellbook
is:
Simple
Projectile - A
Lighting
Bolt - A A
Dragon's
Breath - A B
Magic
Missile - A C
Random
Teleport - B
Dash
- B B
Decoy
- B A
Slow
- C
Freeze
- C C
Repel
- C B
Please also see game
manual.
Trivia
The game
is built on a custom engine designed for
maximum flexibility, extendability and
scalability. Levels define their own
memory maps, allowing for all levels to
reuse the same block of RAM regardless of
the enemies they contain or the behavior
they implement.
Entites
implement a standardized interface using
vtables which allows for a unified level
loop and complex interaction between
entities and spell effects.
