Controls

This is a Pico-8 game and uses the default keyboard controls. Gamepad is also supported.

• Cursor keys to move
• Z for the 'O' button
• X for the 'X' button

There are three different stages in the game, and a random selection of 10 stages will appear in the game:

Hiking

Hold left arrow to move the left foot, then right arrow to move the right foot. If you time the rhythm correctly you can move faster.

Ice climbing

Hold the O button to swing back the ice axe, then release to hit the ice. Try to release only when the circle is smallest (green) otherwise you risk falling.

Rock climbing

Use the left and right arrows to choose a direction to climb, then press the O button to start a rhythm minigame. Hit the correct buttons when they reach the green markers to complete the climb.

Using rope

Press the X button on the climbing stages to bring up a menu, then press O on 'Set rope' to anchor the rope. This is very important, as it will save you from falling! The rope must be reset when it runs out, and too many falls will cause the rope to fail.

Background

This is my second game. I got the inspiration to make a climbing game after watching many Netflix climbing documentaries, which reminded me of a ZX Spectrum game I played in my childhood called Final Assault (1987). I tried playing it again recently and found it enjoyable but very difficult, which made me want to tweak the gameplay. As such, this game is heavily based on Final Assault. But I didn't want to remake the game mechanics exactly, so I replaced the climbing stages with some simple rhythm mechanics instead. I'm not sure it's more fun, but it satisfied my nostalgia!

My goal with making this game was to continue learning Pico-8 and game development, so I intentionally set out to make it very different from my previous game - with much larger sprites and more 'serious' gameplay. I intended to add some more resource management to the game (weight, warmth, hunger/thirst etc), but after implementing the 3 stages I'd almost reached the code limit of Pico-8, so in the end I decided against it. I'm sure I could squeeze more code in if I really tried, but at the moment it's more important for me just to finish the game and continue on other projects.

Credits

I really appreciate the encouragement I received from the Pico8 community on Mastodon while making this game! And thanks to the following for code snippets I used or found helpful:

• Polygon Drawing Method by paranoidcactus
• Anti-aliased lines & circles by freds72
• pq() by pancelor