I shortly considered creating a cheat sheet for Barren Planet, but came to the conclusion it would be useless. The game loop is intuitive and you managed to craft a game that is a pleasure to play using the keyboard. The CGA graphics are also nice and readable.
Barren Planet reminds me of both Military Madness (Nectaris) for PCE and Dune 2.
Yes, there are only five keys for Barren Planet... or seven if you count the choice of Control, Enter or Space for Fire. I *should* have added shortcut keys to it, but that didn't occur to me until after it was released.
I was lucky enough to play this during development and in beta as @cyningstan put it together (a one-man effort!) and can say it's an excellent little retro strategy game. Works great in DOSBox on Mac. We played in PBM mode by sharing the save file back-and-forth over Discord, but the AI doesn't let you snooze through levels in single player mode, either.
This is not just a retro game that looks retro; it's been coded with all the same environment and hardware limitations in mind of early DOS games; if you can get it onto a computer of sufficient vintage, it'll work. Easily on par (or better!) than some commercial games of the era.
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Very nice game, runs like a charm on my Book8088. I created a cheat sheet for it, your feedback/corrections are welcome.
https://cheatography.com/tme520/cheat-sheets/barren-planet-for-msdos-keyboard-ma...
Thanks! But it looks like you confused Barren Planet with Ossuary - these are the Ossuary keys :-)
Ah! Reliability 100
I shortly considered creating a cheat sheet for Barren Planet, but came to the conclusion it would be useless. The game loop is intuitive and you managed to craft a game that is a pleasure to play using the keyboard. The CGA graphics are also nice and readable.
Barren Planet reminds me of both Military Madness (Nectaris) for PCE and Dune 2.
I fixed my incredibly silly mistake and renamed the cheat sheet: https://cheatography.com/tme520/cheat-sheets/ossuary-for-msdos-keyboard-mapping/
I play the two games on my Book8088, they are exactly what I was looking for to enjoy that odd piece of hardware.
Yes, there are only five keys for Barren Planet... or seven if you count the choice of Control, Enter or Space for Fire. I *should* have added shortcut keys to it, but that didn't occur to me until after it was released.
Very cool.
I was lucky enough to play this during development and in beta as @cyningstan put it together (a one-man effort!) and can say it's an excellent little retro strategy game. Works great in DOSBox on Mac. We played in PBM mode by sharing the save file back-and-forth over Discord, but the AI doesn't let you snooze through levels in single player mode, either.
This is not just a retro game that looks retro; it's been coded with all the same environment and hardware limitations in mind of early DOS games; if you can get it onto a computer of sufficient vintage, it'll work. Easily on par (or better!) than some commercial games of the era.
Thank you!