OHR Side-Scrollers, Part 2
A feature by Paul Harrington
Last issue, we looked at examples of basic side-scrolling action games made using the OHR engine. This month, we'll take a closer look at three of the most well-known games made in this style.
Made by ChaosNyte and Retrogamer for a 48 Hours contest, It Came from Beyond the Moon is a surprisingly solid title, given its length and development time. All of its graphics use only black and white pixels, and this gives the game a very unique sense of style. You play as a rather dull-minded hunter who adventures through two stages fighting Mickey Mouse zombies and horrible space abominations. The fact that there are two complete stages (though boss fights have not yet been implemented) and a storyline makes this a more complete title than most OHR side-scrollers, but it's still an extremely brief experience. The animation of both the hero and the enemies are nice, and it would be exciting to see this game continued. A lot of impressive work was done in 48 hours, and there is a lot of potential for something great. Unfortunately, as with 99% of amateur game projects, it has never progressed beyond the initial demo.
Trailblazers is another side-scroller by Retrogamer, and is the most detailed and well made OHR game of this type. The game opens with a well drawn, well animated and humorous cutscene, and from there you can choose one of three characters with various skills. A great feature is the game's options screen, in which you can adjust brightness and choose from several control schemes with which to play. Unfortunately, exiting the options screen means you have to sit through the title screen animation for way too long before you can begin your game. The game's introduction is skippable, but its title cards are not, which is slightly annoying. Another pretty bad decision is that pressing the escape key instantly quits the game, rather than pausing or giving you an exit prompt. The game also randomly crashes game.exe for no reason I can tell, which is especially frustrating since you cannot save.
The in-game graphics are just as detailed and interesting as the introduction's, and everything looks vivid and unique. Controls work well, although your character moves and jumps a bit too fast. Unlike most side-scrollers made for the OHR engine, hit detection works fairly well, and falling into bottom-less pits actually kills you instead of just breaking the game and snapping your character's graphics in half. Most of the game's difficulty, unfortunately, comes from the fact that everything moves too fast. You're far more likely to fling yourself off of a cliff or miss a jump that would be extremely easy in any other platforming action game than to be killed by enemies. There is more variety in enemies, environments, and graphics in this than in any other OHR side-scroller, and these alone make the game worth playing, but the difficulty level is needlessly annoying. There's no real reason to force the player to continue from the opening of the game if they die against the first boss (there are two very complete levels before this boss), especially when said boss is extremely difficult to defeat. In fact, I still can't manage to defeat him. This is the one time when the game's hit detection is terrible; for every six or seven times you shoot this guy, you might hit him once. Nearly everything else will go through him harmlessly. I wouldn't normally give up, but replaying the rest of the game to get back to this point becomes a terrible chore. I recommend this game to anyone looking for something different, but be warned that it's remarkably frustrating at times.
Of the games I've covered in these articles, OHRadius is by far my favorite, although comparing it to the others may be a bit unfair since it's from a very different genre. Though it is indeed a side-scrolling action game, this is a Gradius-style shooter rather than a platformer, and it is quite well made. There is a significant amount of variety to its stages (including Gradius staples such as the fiery stage seen above), and each one is well designed. Before each boss battle, a giant Darius-style WARNING flashes on the screen, which is a really nice design touch.
This is a great example of a game with a good difficulty curve, even if it does go overboard in stage 5. Early enemies pose little threat, allowing you to get used to the game's controls and sometimes clunky hit detection system before plunging into tougher territory. The controls are nice, but not perfect; your ship doesn't automatically move forward with the camera unless you are at the leftmost part of the screen. There are a couple of times where this changes, and the game speeds up dramatically while your ship automatically scrolls forward as in other games of the genre, but these are rare and short lived (and fantastic). Most of the game involves holding "right" and shooting enemies before they can bumble into you.
Though the bosses aren't spectacular to look at, they are fun to fight. The boss fights revolve around avoiding physical contact with enemy ships rather than avoiding bullets, but they're intense nonetheless. Be careful with the boss of the third, stage, though; it's very easy to kill one of his halves before the fight actually begins, and if you do this the other half may end up fleeing to a corner of the screen and becoming unkillable.
The game's difficulty takes a turn for the worse in the fifth stage, where you have to navigate tight passages while avoiding normal enemies as well as an enemy that follows you and drops bombs from above. These kill you instantly, and given how long the stage is, this becomes immensely frustrating. The game is very well balanced up until this stage, at which point it simply becomes annoying. If the bomb dropping enemy did not move at the exact speed of your ship, or if you could survive more hits, it wouldn't be nearly as bad.
There are a few bugs present, the most horrible being random crashes that, as in Trailblazers, happen for no apparent reason. This has prevented me from completely finishing the game every time I've tried. Another annoying bug is that pausing the game stops the camera and bosses, but doesn't actually suspend the movement of normal enemies. Also, you'll sometimes see enemies that you failed to destroy coming back after you from the opposite direction that they originally flew in from, which would be fine if their graphics reversed to show that they were moving in a new direction. Fireballs flying backwards don't quite have the same effect.
Overall, OHRadius is a very good game, and certainly worth playing, but still needs a few tweaks to be great. I recommend it above any other OHR side-scroller that I've played, and it's an excellent example of just how much you can do with this engine that wasn't originally intended. Sadly, it's the only game of its type that has been made, aside from brief mini-games in other titles. I would certainly love to see an updated version with bigger bosses, modified ship movement, and a less annoying fifth stage. This is the game you should play if you really want to be inspired to do something different with your own game.
Also of note, an older version of OHRadius is included in its ZIP file, and it's interesting to take a look at some of the changes. Personally, I prefer the graphics used for your shots and the first boss in the original version, but everything else in the later version is superior.
That's all for now! When will we see the next great OHR side-scroller? That's up to you. Play these games, get inspired, and get working!
