About
Zombit was a 2 day project I undertook in order to get to grips with GameMaker Studio 2, Game Maker Language and the basics of game coding. At this time I’d almost exclusively realised game logic with visual scripting. I was a bit intimidated by text based scripting at first but found it to be quite straightforward.
The end result was this very simple retro arcade game which I embraced by adding several restrictions to further mimic early arcade games. One example is the 2-directional movement of the crosshair, the player can only move right or down. If they want to go left or up they’ll have to wrap around the edges of the grid. This small limit adds some interesting complexity that wouldn’t have been there with a typical 4-directional movement.
I also avoided using recognisable or standardised designs for the leaderboard and loss screen as these wouldn’t have existed or influenced the design of this game. Instead of a classic arcade cabinet leaderboard, the 3 by 3 grid was reused to display 9 high scores in a graveyard. Opting for ‘YOU DIE’ instead of the later standardised ‘GAME OVER’ also tied in better with the leaderboard’s design.
So we’re left with Zombit, a game which once upon a time could have been found sitting between Computer Space and Pong.