What happened?

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You may wonder why the game is not finished and released yet. The reason is simple: we are still working on it. The game itself was ready 95% on February the 1st, but I felt it still needed things done, so I told my peers, ok this needs at least a week to cap it up. During that time some talks were going on about the future of the project, some talks about future projects and we got invited to a retro video game show / exhibition.

Firebat - Revolution...

The game went through some gameplay and graphical changes. This not just covers the finishing of all levels (93 levels in total), but some changes in the game modes. Hard mode wasn't hard enough, so I restricted options for getting extra lives, besides making all the levels using Timer instead of Score Timer. I also started to implement a Rogue mode, which will be the "Even Harder" mode. This game mode will get a new map, with the same levels but scrambled up a little bit and without any story elements. The player will have to choose between 2-3 levels at every step and will have the chance to beat only that one and only one time. The player can fail on a level if the Timer reaches zero, and that means no score, which makes it harder to unlock Upgrades. The next 2-3 levels unlock, the last level, and the level(s) next to it close, making it impossible to replay and on top of that the player can only advance forward. Should the player succeed, open up the next 2-3 levels to choose from, with the previous level's additional score and Fire Pearl (should the level contain one). All other objects, like Golden Credits, stuff to unlock bosses become Fire Pearls on levels (and one turns to the Projectile Enhancer). The Upgrade Screen got an additional socket in this mode: Salvage. As the player can collect more than 17 Fire Pearls and to be able to advance with the upgrades, should not enough score be achieved, the player can decide to sacrifice Fire Pearls to get 500.000 points. The Rogue mode also got its own special Power-up: Extra Time. This power-up adds 10 seconds to the Timer. Graphical changes mostly covered with the Lieutenants (the bosses of the game) getting big sprites, and/or some re-drawing, animation or some effect. This also covers the Epilogue to the story and the re-drawing of the intro (these are still on the drawing board so to speak: hopefully we'll be able to get this done soon). The music of the game is finalized with 16 tracks made for the game. I added a bunch of new sounds to the game, like sounds for some buildings on the Underworld Map. I also encounter problems with stuff I made months ago, so some bug fixing and improvements are always on the table. I am planning to release a new demo version for the game now containing the Rogue mode too.

Regamex - Retro video- and electronic game show / exhibition...

As for the new release date, we agreed on the date of the Regamex show. It takes place in Budapest, Hungary, 2024, April 27-28. At this show you can see and even play with a bunch of old consoles and games. As our goal is to make retro style games we will fit in there perfectly by showcasing Firebat - Revolution, with a planned physical copy of the game: a box, with a small comic strip, and all. We have plans to show some other stuff cooking behind the scenes for the Commodore 64 and we may be able to show something for the Commodore Amiga too. But no promises as of yet. :)

The future...

We have a couple of things on the table, regarding different ports for Firebat, new-old projects to revive-remake and brand new games, ideas to bring to life. We will start to work together with a former colleague of mine, a veteran coder on the ports and the new projects. This will make the code behind the games more stable and leave me to make the graphics and the design full time. As part of the process of making our retro game division official, we now have a name for it: Inked Pixel Software. From now on, this will appear in the game instead of Pixel Krajcár (which is basically good ol' me anyways, but this name still will appear here and there :)).