Twin Snakes Run - new game, avaliable also on tape at Retronics

michomis · June 1, 2023

Twin Snakes Run is an uncomplicated puzzle game reminiscent of the popular snake. It differs from other games of this type in that we control two twin snakes at once, which move in the same directions, creating the same route, but mastering mazes with different obstacles. We don't collect anything here, and the trick is to lead both snakes to the exit at once.

Blocking one of them makes it impossible to continue the game and then the level must be restarted. The snake gets longer with each "step" and cannot go through itself. There are 32 levels, and the level of difficulty usually increases with each new one. For ease, we can also start the game from 10 or 20 level.

The game was written in 6502 assembler and it is my first program in this language, because so far I have only tried coding in Atari Basic ("Tuneup", "Troll's Treasure" and "Moon Quest" games). The impulse to try to write something in assembler was the series of videos "Let's Make EdVenture" on the YouTube channel "Mission: Ed Possible", where the author presents the creation of a roguelike game for small Atari from scratch.

During the development of "Twin Snakes Run" Marek "Xeen" Cora was a great support to me, he gave advice, explained many things, and also wrote some procedures that make the game work, look and sound much better. The title artwork was created by Piotr "Piesiu" Radecki. The rest of the work (game mechanics, level art, music) was done by me.

There was an idea to make a few copies on a cassette tape for the creative team, but finally we decided with Jerzy "Duddie" Dudek to release it in his company Retronics, in the "Classic" version for those interested (limited to 50 copies). Jerzy "Mono" Kut also came with support, who prepared a loader for the cassette release, as well as Konrad "Gades" Leśniak, who lent one of his songs (more specifically "Nightride" from the album Runaway from 2017), which is played on the second channel when loading a game from a tape.

The game should run on any configuration. It was tested on Atari 400/800 and XL/XE series. It supports both PAL and NTSC systems. A minimum of 32kB of RAM is required. The snakes are controlled with a joystick. Other control keys:

FIRE - start or restart of the level
START - start from level 01 or return to the title menu
SELECT, OPTION - start from level 10 or 20

Game is avaliable to buy at https://retronics.eu/ please contact publisher directly.

Twin Snakes Run.xex

Edited June 1, 2023 by michomis