Scout The Stray

maze crawler game for Commodore 64, 2022

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The character that the player will have to control is Scout, a stray dog, who
has to go through different mazes munching on the bones scattered in them and
avoiding being captured by the dog catchers who are chasing him. A level will
end when all bones have been eaten.

The game has 32 levels to complete. However, it must be said that the mazes
are procedurally generated, therefore, with each new game, the player will
find himself facing ever-changing levels. As the player advances through the
levels, the speed of the chasers will increase more and more until he reaches
the last level.

As a defense weapon, Scout has "barks" at his disposal, with which he can
scare the dog catchers who will run away from our hero for a few seconds. As
long as the enemies are scared, they are completely harmless. However, the
barks cannot be used repeatedly, since about 3 seconds will have to pass
before being able to bark again (at the top left of the screen there is a
small bar that indicates the "charge" status of the bark).

For every certain number of bones devoured, a "magic" ball will come into play
which, depending on the color, will perform different actions once collected.
The red ball will activate the "x3" (the bones eaten later will be worth 30
points instead of 10). The blue ball will make all the enemies run away just
like when using the bark. The purple ball will activate a letter inside the
writing EXTRA placed at the top center of the screen; once the writing is
complete, the player will earn a life. The cyan ball will make the dog
catchers disappear for a few seconds, after which they will re-enter the
entrance gate of the maze as if nothing had happened. Finally, there is a
ball that changes color and that will give a different score depending on it
(brown = 1000, green = 2000, yellow = 3000).

Options

You can choose between 4 difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert.

You can turn on/off the in-game music.

Controls

Joystick in port 2.

Joystick lever = Move Scout
Fire button = Bark

While playing, press F7 to pause or F1 to stop the game and
go back to the title screen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some useful keyboard shortcuts
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       [PAUSE] - stop/continue game
          [F9] - quick load game state
         [F12] - quick save game state (still stored after leaving the site)
         [F10] - toggle performance meter
         [F11] - toggle fullscreen mode
  [ScrollLock] - quick switch control ports
    [PageDown] - make a screenshot (320x200)