RetroWar

RetroWar is a collection of 8-bit retro style arcade games. For the inital release we are focused on single-screen multiplayer games that you play with your friends locally (i.e. sitting on the couch together.) There is no single player mode (yet).  Game is in First Access and only available on Itch.  (The Steam key is a lie until Steam release.) Dev blog

Trailer music by NOVACUB.

Games

• SpaceShips - battle in the tradition of SpaceWar / Asteroids / Thrust / Subspace
• Droids - fast-paced twin stick shooter
• Tank Combat - tactical sniping game
• BombBots - drop bombs to blow up your opponents, but don't get caught in the blast
• GhostJumpers - platform race to be first while jumping over spooky enemies

Inspiration

RetroWar came about as the convergence of several opinions we have formed about games.  

Why 8bit style?  

Fantasy consoles like Pico8 are great for gamers because they apply limitations to creativity.  This forces the creator to focus the majority of their effort on to the thing that really matters, gameplay, and not divert effort to graphics and sound.  It also allows a single auteur to directly author an entire game - his vision is not filtered through artists and level designers.  

(This is not to say that great artwork does not improve a game, but the effort required for each improvement in artwork is exponential, and thus the sales figures required to support prettier games also increase exponentially.  Meanwhile the improvement in player experience only scales linearly.  This is a poor tradeoff for the small studio or solo developer.)  

However not all the limitations of the old systems are beneficial.  In particular, for professional programmers and artists, we want to use the most modern and advanced tools available to create games.  We also want our games to support modern controllers and frame rates.  Thus RetroWar could not run on a console (fantasy or otherwise).  Instead we developed an open source library, (RetroWar-common) to easily implement the features we want from a fantasy console.  

Why single-screen multiplayer?  

In our opinion, the most fun games are couch multiplayer games.  So we made one.  But not just one, because that can get boring.  Instead we made a system to make it easy for us to create and tweak a whole host of such games.  And we documented it so other people can add their own games to the system.

Features

• Old school low resolution gaming - no mixing of different sized pixels here.
• Authentic sound track of soundtracker mods and 8-bit chiptunes.
• Highly modable - change the music, graphics, rules, or write your own games.
• Play with controller or mouse/keyboard
• Designed for 4 players, but supports up to 16.

First Access on itch.io

Currently RetroWar is only available here on itch.io as a First Access title.  This is to give the itch.io community a chance to play it before it's ready for the general gamer, and hopefully provide useful feedback.  Expect bugs!

When you buy on itch.io you will receive a Steam key too.  This key will not work until the game is released on Steam!

We hope to move from First Access into Early Access on Steam around December 2018.  Then we can begin working on additional features.

We want feedback from you as to what you would like to play. None of these features are guaranteed, but we plan to work on the features you support.

• Workshop support - share games made by other people
• Online multiplayer
• Steam Input (Steam Controller) support
• Linux and Mac support

Known bugs

If you plug in a new controller or change the screen mode you must quit the game and re-start it for the change to be recognised.