For a number of years I have been noodling with the idea of porting the popular TRS-80 Color Computer game, Dungeons of Daggorath, to modern hardware. I was one of the best, if not the best exclusive game for the Coco and while most games of the era were superseded by more sophisticated successors, I have never played another game that feels anything like Daggorath. Some elements, like managing your heart rate, seem like they should have become a common element in games, while others, such as typing fast to steal CPU cycles and slow down the enemies, aren't at all likely to emerge on newer systems.
Earlier this year, Global Gam Jam ran with the theme "Sound of a Heartbeat". It reminded me of Daggorath and inspired me to take the time to see if I could secure a suitable license. As I quickly discovered, a license for all had already been made available 10 years earlier. I decided I had better get on with it then, at least as a side project as time permits.
It is worth noting that there is an existing PC port. Richard Hunerlach and other contributors have done a fine job, however the timing and speed of the game is quite different to the original. And there are a few other things I want to experiment with, such as whether a game centered around typing fast can be made to work well on touch devices.
I am a bit late in starting this development blog, in part because it has become more involved than I had originally envisioned. However I am finding the development experiences to be quite unique and so I will probably write a few catch-up posts over the next couple of weeks.