As some of you already know, the Apple II Software Enthusiasts Facebook Group hosted a friendly, game-themed two-liner programming exhibition in the first quarter of 2020. The exhibition concluded yesterday with a number of amazing, compact, and fun little gems!
A free collection of .dsk images along with information (where provided) about how each game is played and/or created can be found on the Crow Cousins – Two Liners page. We hope that you’ll download and try out each little game and, maybe, learn some cool two-liner programming tricks along the way!
The top three entries as rated by our wonderful volunteer panel of judges were:
1. Mind The Gap – by Lee Fastenau
“Easy to learn, difficult to master” perfectly describes Mind The Gap. The game is a perfect example how a simple and elegant game can lead to hours (and hours, and hours) of entertainment. The blending of text and hi-res graphics produces a unique type of gameplay most of us have not seen (or considered) before on an Apple II and is well done.Your only goal in life is to use your joystick to advance a simply adorable bouncing ball over a series of “platforms” without falling into a gap! Sounds easy, right? It’s not. Trust me. Give it a try and see for yourself!
*** Congratulations to Lee Fastenau for his well-earned victory! ***
2. Descent Into The Dark and Gloomy Depths of Uranus.
Episode 4: A New Probe – by Francois Vander Linden
Using a joystick, maneuver your ship through a dynamically generated collection of cavern passageways! Get to the end before the timer runs out and go to the next level! See how far you can make it before the timer runs out!I love the graphics of this game, from the tiny spacecraft, all the way to the excellent caverns generated programmatically for each level which absolutely contain the extreme smattering of stalactites and stalagmites that one would hope to encounter while exploring a real cave…in a spaceship…on a distant planet…while being forced to race against a timer… 😀
*** Congratulations to Francois Vander Linder for taking second place with his wonderful creation! ***
3. Slither – by Sellam Abraham
This excellent lo-res game is truly an example of the amazingly robust things that can be created on an Apple II in so few lines of code, and takes me right back to the good old days of playing Snake Byte on my Franklin Ace 1000!
Using the arrow keys, you must move your very hungry snake around the screen, avoiding red “folly” which will cause part of your snake to pop off and shrink (and eventually die), while consuming green “sustenance” to grow ever larger, all while avoiding the borders of the screen and your ever-growing snake body, of course.Be sure to check out the full disk version included in the archive to see the game’s excellent lo-res logo and story-teller-style introduction.
*** Congratulations to Sellam Abraham for taking the third place spot with his excellent game! ***
