Pumpkin Dash

About

Created in my free time over the course of 1 week this game was made specifically for the Halloween season (can you tell?!)

The tables have been turned – this time you’re the pumpkin out to collect as much candy as you can. For each piece of candy you eat something wicked this way comes! Skulls, tomb stones, ghosts and bats will all try to get you, so avoid them all.

If you see a Witches Hat appear collect it – it could be a Trick or a Treat, who knows?

Pros

• Quick build time (for me at least! I’m getting better, but I still fiddle and tweak for far too long)
• It’s a fun little concept, nothing ground-breaking, but it has a few subtle twists
• I’m very happy with the trail effects
• Suitably spooky sound effects add to it
• Lovely “death” animation sequence by Eric Su

Cons

• Casual gamers find it hard and die very quickly, Experienced games find it too slow and it takes a while for it to speed up to a level they enjoy! Such is life
• Would have liked to add more effects and trick or treats
• Could have done with some music

Development Trivia

• A number of play testers mistake the trail as being dangerous (like snake, the classic Nokia mobile phone game). They actively try and avoid their own trail! Which is insane, because it doesn’t harm you one bit
• Nothing harms you if it’s fading in/out or dropping into place. I figured that was just too unfair.
• It’s semi based on an old Atari ST public domain game called Zyklop. In that version you moved much faster, the turning was really difficult, and there were levels (collect 5 things to complete each level). This started out life as Zyklop, but turned into Pumpkin Dash very soon after.