The Lower Caverns

Game
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Thursday, June 16, 2022 - 08:48.
Release Year
2025
Copyrights
Copyrights Declined
Author
David Ledbury
Matthew Holt
Artist
Gordon Wallis
Musician
František Fuka
Description

Announced for preview at 18th June at RetCon 2019 and for release on Sam Revival cover disk. Updates also appeared at subsequent RetCon events, including a high score competition at the 2023 event.

Features:

 

Screenshots
2022 RetCon promotional image for The Lower Caverns
Trivia
  • Per the original MM conversion, the game uses a palette of just 12 colours, with the remaining 4 set aside for palette cycling, taking the place of traditionally animated conveyors, etc
  • Palette switching used sparingly to allow a more unique feel to some caverns
  • New and unique title screen image, and each set of 20 caverns has a unique 'topper' for the final cavern
  • Reinstates Eugene, such that "The Sugar Factory" cavern is back to being "Eugene's Lair", though the Eugene sprite is new and unique to The Lower Caverns
  • Replaces the 'solar death beam' game over screen with the more traditional 'boot crush'
  • Player sprite now has 8 frames of animation
  • Many of the enemy sprites now come in multiple colour variations
  • Most of the graphic design was done in SAMPaint running under SimCoupe, with some elements created in Adobe Photoshop and transferred via SCADM
  • Dedicated custom font for cavern names
  • Originally planned to be 256K compatible, but the additional graphical content necessitated development as 512K-only
  • Bob McFarlane's remixed caverns are included, but some features are absent or cut down, according to the limitations of the SAM game engine
  • One of Phil Wilson's proposed caverns proved impossible to implement, but the idea is now on the 'To Do' list for another game
  • Published by SAM Revival magazine, but officially an Entropy product
  • The Lower Caverns logo was created in Adobe Illustrator, but the original files were lost in an external HD crash in 2020