Secondhand Wizard (2HW)
A downloadable game for Windows
An experimental game showcasing the second-person perspective in a simple, yet compelling way.
Description:
You just got done uploading your consciousness into your personal computer, when your digital curator asks: "Which game would you like to explore first?" You have since learned to regret these words: "Surprise me."
Enter Chris Crawford's legendary Atari 2600 prototype Wizard.
You appear in the arena with which you are all too familiar, only now the wizard and creature have put aside their eternal conflict and are teaming up to annihilate the foreign intruder—YOU! Your only hope to break the hold of this forbidden Atari realm is to turn them against each other, one last time.
Secondhand Wizard (2HW) was submitted for the 7dfps game jam (make a first person game in seven days).
How to Play: The objective is to get the two enemies to collide. Find one enemy and guide them to the other. The wizard is slightly faster than the creature and can overtake him with some careful strategy on your part. The creature packs a stronger punch, so be sure to keep your guard up!
Approach the mangled pixelated corpses of your foes to respawn them for another round.
Controls:
- movement: up, down, left, right
- pivot: z, x
- screen toggle: f4
Credits:
- Tyler Wright: design, art, programming, music
- Special thanks:
- Chris Crawford, the original creator of the "Wizard" Atari 2600 unreleased prototype. Go play it!
- Mark Overmars for the original Game Maker 6 first-person shooter tutorial and engine which provided the foundation for this game.
Download
Install instructions
This download contains one .zip with a single executable (.exe) file to play. Unzip the file with the program of your choice (WinZip, 7Zip, etc.).
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Cool little simple game. The music definitely adds to the tension of coming across a monster in the dark corridors. The graphics were a good choice and added some needed color contrast and blocky Atari-esque simplicity. Hard to get the both of them into the same area, but I finally got them to collide! And only 4MB 🤯
Nice job!
Thanks for giving it a spin! It was a blast revisiting the old Game Maker 6 engine for this project. A bit of a nostalgia rush on two counts.
As for my managing to slim it down into 4MB, it wouldn't be the spiritual successor to "Wizard" without a smaller file size--I hear the original Wizard prototype was the last of the 2KB Atari games. Chris Crawford fit in so much awesome into a 2600 cartridge. Shame it didn't see the light of day for many years after the decommission of the Atari 2600.