⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ move
⭕️ [Z] Fire / Jump
❎ [X] Skip / Continue
Dragowfall is a mashup of these 3 games from the 80's, in the style of Intellivision, all glued together to form a more intense chivalry-themed adventurous experience: upgrade your stats at shops, save damsels in distress, acquire knighthood, get married, choose between greed and Honour!
You start your adventure as a weak bachelor squire with disproportionate ambition and as much recklessness, to the extent that you volunteered to a deadly quest: you offered your loyalty to the duke promising him to bring back his treasures since the Dragonlord took over the castle and the rest of forts in the region will soon be its next targets.
Ride your white horse Shadowfax to reach the castle. On the way you'll encounter several (depends on level) dark horses, some mounted by the Dragonlord's minions. How to zap them: keep ⭕️ pressed and release when the lightning bolt is close to your enemies.
Grab lightning bolts (to refill the yellow bar at the top, you can't zap when empty) and health potions on the way; the red bar at the top is your Health. Hint: zapping wild horses could drop extra bolts and potions, while mounted ones drop more gold items.
Upgrades and shops:
A sign indicates that a mage shop is near, better move towards the top of the screen. You can invest your gold (in yellow at the bottom) to buy upgrades: some will be useful for the Shadowfax stage only (e.g. anything related to lightning bolts) while the rest is about your health and physical resistance and they're always valid for all stages. Note: the more you buy the higher the prices will be on the next shops.
The entrance to the castle must be near but you have to survive this complex maze of dungeons. One does not simply walk on the surface -which has its hazards too-, you'd need to wander underground... especially if you want to gather all gold items and extra potions. The gameplay here is a mix of Pitfall! and Pitfall II: jump pools and vines (the handy vines will appear rarely at higher levels), avoid rolling trunks, birds on the surface, bats and deadly scorpions underground. Far to the left a sign will finally indicate the castle entrance.
Rescue the maiden:
A damsel, the daughter of the duke, is held captive in the dark cellar under the main entrance tower. Unless you've already gathered all the gold ingots, a greedy mage is blocking the access to the cellar. See bottom right of the HUD to know how many ingots still need to be found. Once inside, careful since it's pitch-dark and at least one bat is inside. Climb up to the left to reach a trapdoor, press down ⬇️ to reach for the damsel and lift her up. At this point she will follow you. Safely bring her to your horse, Shadowfax will take her back to the duke's residence, even if she's wounded or unconscious (her health will decide the bonus points, you could even lose points if she's in critical condition)
You're inside the castle walls and fireballs are thrown at you: ⭕️ jump or ⬇️ duck to avoid them (or even take shelter walking back at the tower door). As you advance on the drawbridge a ladder will appear, in case you need an extra potion but beware the electric eel.
Behind the door on the left there's the final stage of each level, the treasure hall where you'll come face to face with the Dragon, more fireballs thrown at you, especially on higher levels.
At the top you see two doors, the exit on the left will be unlocked once you gather all treasure items belonging to the duke.
You finally escape the dragon and -before starting a new level- you visit the duke to declare the extent of the recovered treasure (use ⬆️⬇️ to select the percent, 10% is the minimum).
It is suggested to be greedy and keep a good amount of gold for yourself to spend on upgrades early and improve your initial weakness, at least until you're experienced enough.
Giving him back a high percentage will grant you honour and respect (and a higher score as you'll receive that same amount in points).
Bounty:
All the gold recovered in a single level -not spent in upgrades- is considered as current bounty and the percent of gold you give back to the duke at the end of the level is based on such amount; even if you select 100% you will still keep the gold saved on previous levels.
While at the duke's court, you might notice a red heart appearing next to the damsel you've just saved. Clearly you've made an impression on her and -yes- you're also selecting the most honourable option declaring 100% of the bounty.
You think you're ready to take the plunge? Maybe too soon?
When you marry the duke's daughter you will:
The game uses pixel-perfect collisions and the damage taken depends on the overlap between the hero and enemies.
In general damage is calculated as -1hp each pixel. While a superficial contact (3 pixels or less) will result in a very short invulnerable state (i-frames, you can tell by the hero flickering) regardless of your upgrades, if the penetration is deeper (4 pixels or more) you will still get the same damage per pixel but the invulnerability lasts longer. You can upgrade to increase this duration and the measurement unit is "frames": the game runs at 60fps (frames per second) so if you upgrade invulnerability to 30 it means you cannot take damage after a hit for half a second.
In the first Shadowfax stage it is slightly different: if the contact is superficial (3 pixels or less) you don't take any damage, it is considered "grazing" and you also score a few points.
Armour: your initial armour grants a maximum damage of 30 per hit. Once you're knighted your armour will further reduce the amount of penetration damage depending on level. For instance becoming knight at level 10 will set the threshold to 20 max dmg.
Items in the treasure hall are worth three times as much.
How many HP you get picking up health potions and lightning bolts can be upgraded in the shop.
The progress is saved at the end of each completed level. If you die you can still ❎ Continue from the last saved state (it works like a checkpoint) while pressing ⭕️ in the main screen will discard your progress and start a new game. Note: even when no "Continue Lvl." is explicitly shown at the bottom of the main screen, you can still choose ❎ to restart a game with the previous random 'seed': you could try this option at the beginning, especially if you failed to beat the Pitfall stage, so the dungeons layout and enemies will be identical to the previous game, it should be easier to beat it on a second run knowing where the hazards were.
At any time during the game you can open the pause menu (P or Enter) and select "Journey" to display useful stats and info on your current game (level, status, armour and upgrades) also you can scroll the list of castles and forts to review the honour obtained in your past quests. Note: on the left you see the tower icons, the more the distance from the left side the longer the path to the castle will be (length of the Shadowfax ride, good chance of gathering more gold and upgrades at shops along the way).
By pressing ⬅️➡️ you can switch between Journey and Achievements page, showing the all-time best results; in the scrollable list the best Honour points for each level are recorded (excluding marriage and rescue bonuses) showing whether the dragon is still undefeated.
Code, art, SFX & Music: by @Heracleum two of the tunes are a tribute to audiovisual project iamamiwhoami (;john and n)
Thanks to:
thisismypassword for creating Shrinko8;
Feedback/proofreading: Trog
Bugs: @2bitchuck , @Jadelombax
you for playing the game!