In Search of "Dojin" by Hiroshi Suzuki (1980) Update 3

My son Charlie did a little play testing and he wondered about the ability of the enemies to "jump off" the obstacle.  I had added a feature to the being-pushed-along-by-the-obstacle routine that randomly (1 in 12) let the enemy stop being pushed (i.e. to "jump off").  Obviously this manifested more in the middle of the screen because the enemies ride longer in that zone. That was my hope. This was meant as a way to cut down on the random killing of enemies as they moved about (something Charlie and I had talked about at great length). This randomness was also meant to encourage the player to try lure the enemies into the upper and lower regions where they could be more assured of being crushed.

Also, the points of intersections of "the road" and "forest paths" also have checks for tracking, so the enemies can jump off when the log goes by pathways and the enemy is near the end of the obstacle.  Again, I wanted to diminish the likelihood of the enemies simply being crushed by chance as they moved around.  I wanted the player to have to understand and manipulate the tracking behaviour of the enemies to lure them to their doom.  But the game with the long obstacle still tended to kill enemies quite frequently without the player's efforts even with these tweaks. So the player would often only be facing one or two, which seemed not to be in the original spirit of the game as described.  So I went back and looked at the diagrams and noticed that the "car" (obstacle) wasn't depicted as being as wide as the central "road". So I shortened it by two blocks and I have taken out the randomness of the enemies being able to occasionally "jump off."

My latest version really creates some interesting dynamics for the enemies.  Now they don't get killed so easily crossing the road.  You really have to work at luring them across near the top or bottom, which is quite different from the prior version.  Because more of them survive for longer they also really pose a challenge for the survival of the player, as they can scrum you en masse and trap you in corners more easily.  Is it too much?  I need to figure out if I need to slow the game down some more (I've already slowed it a little from the last version).  I find it a real challenge, but I'm old, so not a good play tester.  I'll have to try to convince Charlie to do some more testing.  I''ve put the new version up on the Internet Archive and my other locations, such as Game Jolt.  So if anyone else wants to try it, suggestions are welcome.

The game uses the AWSD keys for movement.

It can be downloaded (along with the VMC10 emulator) from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/DOJIN

And played online at GameJolt (Select the big green bordered "Play" button.  Then select "DOJIN" under the "Recodings of Classic BASIC Programs" menu item): https://gamejolt.com/games/jgmc-10games/339292

Source code can be found here: https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Arcade/Dojin