Blowhole GBA

Blowhole
Blowhole
General
Author	Lance Legan
Type	Puzzle
Version	0.90
License	GPL-2.0
Last Updated	2011/04/02
Links
	Download
	Website
	Source

Blowhole is a puzzle game for the Game Boy Advance. The idea for Blowhole came from the game Slippy 1.0 by Martin Hock for the TI-85 calculator with ZShell.

15 of Blowhole's 25 levels are adapted forms of levels from Slippy 1.0. The other 10 are original levels. Slippy 1.0 can still be found in the file archives at ticalc.org.

Features

Clear code and documentation.
Sub-Pixel Rendered font.
Level maps in an easy format.
Complete and playable game.

User guide

You are Blowhole, a fun loving killer whale in the ocean. Being the inquisitive whale that you are, you enjoy collecting mysterious Yellow Pearl. It is not hard to spot them, but it sometimes is difficult to get to them because there are rocks, pesky fisherman's nets, and school of fish in your way.

Unfortunately, you can not move the rocks, but you are a strong and smart whale, and you have figured out that you can hit a school of fish into a net, causing the school of fish to be captured and the net to be raised, clearing a path for you to swim through.

You can also swim off one side of the screen and end up on the opposite side. When you hit a school of fish, it will move in a straight line in the direction that you hit it, and it will stop when it reaches rocks or another school of fish, or be captured if it reaches a net. Be careful though, if you hit a school of fish off one side of the screen, they will swim away and not return. Also, if you hit a school of fish into a Yellow Pearl the fish will take the pearl! Your goal is to collect all the Yellow Pearl in a level in order to move on to the next level. Complete all 25 levels to win the game.

Your progress will be battery saved after you complete each level, so you can turn off the system and resume play later from where you left off.

Note:' if you are using a multiboot cable to load the game, your progress can not be saved. Once the system is turned off, you will have to start over from level one.

Controls

Level select screen:

Up/Down - Choose level

Start - Begin level

In game:

D-Pad - Swim around

D-Pad+A - Hit a school of fish

Start - Return to the Level select screen

L+R - Restart the level if you get stuck

A+B+Select+Start - Reset the game

Screenshots

Compatibility

Blowhole has been designed for and tested on hardware (an actual Game Boy Advance). You can load it on a Game Boy Advance via an MBV2 Multiboot cable using the file blowhole.mb.

It will also run on a Visoly Flash Card (necessary for your game in progress to be saved). You can use the file blowhole.gba or blowhole.mb with a Flash Card, either will work, though blowhole.mb strangely gives better performance in some aspects.

Blowhole will also run on GBA emulators, although not as good as actual GBA. It has been tested on BoycottAdvance and VisualBoyAdvance, and the game save also works on emulators (the emulator will typically create a blowhole.sav file with the saved data). Use blowhole.gba with emulators for the best results.

Changelog

2002/08/04

Finished game web page and officially released Blowhole version .90.

2002/08/03

Completed 25 level designs/adaptations and prepared game for release.

2002/07/26

Completed commenting the code and writing documentation files, all that is left is designing more levels.

2002/07/22

Added the battery save feature which completed the game, moved into documentation.

2002/07/12

Collision was perfected and moved into programming the Level Select Screen.

2002/07/11

Game engine was complete and playable but needed some collision tweaking.

2002/07/03

Began game development starting with designing the graphics and began programming.

Credits

External links

Author's website - http://www.somethingscrewy.com/ (archived)