Genre: Remake, Survival Horror

Features: Online multiplayer, Day/Night cycle

Project started on: October 21th 2013
Project completed on: June 13th 2013
Approximate time spent on project: 160 hours

My goal with this Friday the 13th remake was first of all to remake the infamous NES game by fixing some of the worst elements of its design while retaining a bit of old-school nostalgia that would come by playing such a game. Secondly, I wanted to add online multiplayer to it, although in a basic form - only for multiple people to play in the same universe and have the same progress and not being able to interact between each other in meaningful ways.

I also wanted to use my sprite-to-3d technology that I had developed during a previous scrapped project, the idea being that taking a simple sprite from a game and turns it into a 3d object with the smallest number of cubes possible - merging them as needed. Doing so required a great deal of optimization work on my end. At first, loading the game was taking upwards of ten minutes and I had to fix that - mostly by generating assets beforehand and saving them separately so they could be loaded instantaneously. I also did some work with the way I generated my content - the maps are still created dynamically - to improve the framerate until it stayed at 60

Another thing that I did is learn how to stop relying on frames for game logic and I vastly improved performance by relaying tasks that should go on timers to proper timers. I also added RPG mechanics to most of the core aspects of the game, as adding numbers and stats to everything is one of my traits as a designer. I still have a few bugs to patch in this game, but I'm quite proud of it. I took already existing music and SFX as creating my own would take too much time and yield poor results.

Screenshots

About the game

The ultimate goal of Friday The 2013th is to defeat Jason three times, there is an additional goal to prevent children from being killed in their cabins. The player starts in a state where everything is 'fine' but they get a warning telling them that jason is going to strike somewhere. Using their maps, they must navigate to the right cabin and fight the boss enemy until he loses all of his health, then they must do the same thing on two more days, where he gets stronger weapons and trickier attacks. While not hunting and fighting Jason, the player must find Lighters to light fireplaces in order to get hints about ways to become stronger, he can also obtain items from enemies.

Each player can play one of the six 'iconic' camp counselors from the original game - each with different statistics. The statistics are split between Strength, Perception, Luck and Speed. Each character also starts somewhere different on the map. On the subject of the map, I've added a small path between the two inner loops as to make travel easier in this area of the world. Players upgrade their weapons, defeat hidden bosses - like Jason's Mom - and find hidden cabins in the woods in order to grow their arsenal against their mortal enemy. Multiple people can play in the same 'world', in that case, Jason's health and location is shared amongst them, so one player nearby can go fight instead of others.

That being said, in single player mode, if the player dies, it's game over. In the original game, you could switch between each counsellor almost at will in order to cover more ground and keep your health high enough. To compensate for this, movements across the whole map are reasonably timed for a single character and Healing items are more common and more efficient. I've also removed any kind of jumping-based item spawning, everything is now dropping from enemies. The cave is also not a maze anymore and the forest is a randomly-generated maze. The day/night cycle is now more understandable with a little picture of time passing at the top of the screen.

Another important point of the game is the necessity to light fireplaces; they actually unlock the possibility for items to drop, so they are not just cryptic hints like in the original game.

Controls

Outside
- Arrow keys: Face a direction / Move in that direction
- X: Jump
- Z: Attack
On a boat
- Left/Right: Row left/right
- X: Dodge
- Z: Attack
Inside a house
- Up: Move forward
- Left/Right: Rotate 90 degrees
- X: Light a fireplace if a lighter is in inventory
In a fight
- Left/Right: Dodge left/right
- Down: Duck
- Z: Attack

Items

Key: Unlocks doors in the woods and the cave
Flashlight: Automatically shines at night and in the cave
Medicine: Heals 30 hit points when the player's life is below 30
Lighter: Lights up
Sweater: Turns your character pink and reduces incoming damage by 25%

Weapons

Rocks, Knives, Axes, Machetes, Torches, Pitchforks

Enemies

Zombie: Walks around trying to bump into you
Water Zombie: Jumps out of the water
Crow: Spawns after 5 zombie kills, tries to fly into you
Wolf: Only seen in the forest, charges up and runs through the screen
Bat: Only seen in the cave, flies around with its glowy eyes
Jason
- On the world map, Jason will run at you and throw things at you
- Inside houses, Jason has multiple attacks
  - He can sweep the room to hit the player
  - He can move left and right and randomly charge down
  - He can throw his weapon
  - He can move to the sides and throw multiple weapons following a pattern
  - He can move back and charge at you for heavy damage if you don't knock him out
  - He can close the lights and appear at the last second
Jason's Mom
- Jason's mom also has multiple attacks depending on the day
  - She can split herself in two and try to crush you
  - She can charge at you
  - She can shoot fireballs
  - She can create two illusions to confuse you as she charges