The Rat - for Commodore 64
Story: (At least as best I could come up with ....I was unable to find a copy of the manual. I was able to contact the game's designer via email to see if he was okay with this description and/or if he could give me the actual story. He loved my version and couldn't really remember the original story anyway as it's been 30+ years.)
You are a rat. You're hungry. You've found a cheese store that you intend to raid; it, unfortunately, rests atop an 8-story tall building.
Does this discourage you? No! You're a rat!
Choosing to defy the odds, you saunter into the main floor of the building to start your quest. It is only then you realize that not only will you have to dodge spiders and snakes as you move from floor to floor, the building's security system (for some insane, ungodly reason) requires six signal pads to be triggered before the door will open for the elevator to the next floor.
On top of all that, on each individual floor, the signal pads begin moving around once one of them has been triggered; making your task that much more difficult. To add even more confusion; as each signal pad is triggered, a random effect will occur on that floor. These random effects may impact you (the rat itself), the snakes/spiders, the walls of the level itself, or possibly even release a mechanical security guard hellbent on permanently interrupting your quest.
Can you make it to the great cheesy realm above? Only time will tell.
Game Basics
- You're the red triangular rat.
- Snakes kill you. Spiders only stun you. Both should be avoided.
- You can shoot (spit?) at the snakes and spiders to stun them. When they are stunned, they cannot kill/stun you.
- Signal Pad effects:
- The six signal pads's effects are unique on any given level.
- While each floor has the same six letter-coded signal pads, what each letter-coded pad does varies from level to level of the building.
- Some effects used on one level may be seen on other levels.
- Examples of effects that occur on every level
- Kill/remove one snake and one spider
- Remove some portion of the level's walls
- Release the mechanical security guard.
- Change the background colors.
- The level layouts of Levels 1-4 are repeated for Levels 5-8, but the signal pad effects are different (as are where destroyed walls are positioned).
TAS Notes/Goals
- Beat the game as quickly as possible by reaching the Cheese Store at the top of the building.
- Heavy luck manipulation
- Genre: Action/Puzzle
Potential Improvements
This run is significantly better than my previous canceled submission, but there's always potential for improvement right?
The RNG of this game is affected by both the rat's movement and its spitting. Both enemy movement as well as signal pad movement are affected by RNG, thus it's possible there are better routing options than what I've accomplished via different RNG manipulation. While there may be room for improvement in this area, changing RNG anywhere affects all subsequent aspects of the run requiring significant re-do of all parts of the run subsequent to that RNG change.
All spitting in this run is utilized for RNG manipulation; any stunning of snakes/spiders is simply secondary benefit.
Level specific Notes:
- Level 1 - Nothing needs explained, IMO.
- Level 2 - Hitting the "R" signal pad sends the rat back to the beginning of the level. Due to the proximity of the just-spawned security guard enemy, this can appear to be a death; it is not.
- Level 3 - Unless collected last, hitting the "R" signal pad resets the level to its initial state with no signal pads triggered.
- Level 4 -
- Hitting the "T" signal pad temporarily freezes the motion of the other pads. This is collected first to simplify collection of the rest.
- Hitting the "H" signal pad temporarily freezes the rat's motion.
- Level 5 - Nothing needs explained, IMO.
- Level 6 - Nothing needs explained, IMO.
- Level 7 - Hitting the "A" signal pad causes the rest to turn invisible. Being a TAS, I was still able to track the pad locations using an lua script and thus complete the level.
- Level 8 - Hitting the "A" signal pad causes the rat's controls to be reversed....this is not apparent to a viewer due to TAS precision controls.
slamo: Replaced movie file with one that uses a better disk image (coincidentally, this saved 134 frames of loading time).
slamo: Nice job optimizing this one. After trying to improve certain parts, I can appreciate the routing and luck manipulation that went into this.
There was a bit of a question about which medium this game came on because information about it is so scant. You've managed to contact the author, who believes the game was released on disk, so we'll allow this disk image to be used.
As for entertainment, feedback was somewhat positive but limited. C64 games with similar feedback haven't fared that well with ratings in the past. So, accepting to Vault.
feos: Pub.