8Bit Killer
note is a Freeware First-Person Shooter developed by Locomalito and released in 2008. Set in the middle of the 22nd century, the game puts you in the role of a lone soldier working for La Résistance, who are fighting Master Brain: an alien who promised a new dawn after mankind's own long and destructive war, but instead raised a massive army and launched an assault to destroy the last of Earth’s few remaining cities.
The game features an 8-bit aesthetic, with entities appearing as 2D sprites in a 3D world constructed from flat textures (visually similar to games like Wolfenstein 3-D), 1-bit sound effects and a chiptune soundtrack by RushJet1. The game is 4 chapters long – each chapter consists of a linear first stage, a labyrinthine second stage where you look for keys to progress through locked doors and the third and final stage where you fight the boss of the chapter. During the game you’ll find progressively stronger weapons and extensions to your Life Meter and ammo capacity.
Locomalito would go on to create L'Abbaye des Morts, Hydorah, Maldita Castilla and The Curse of Issyos, all of which are similarly retro-styled.
This game contains examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: In Chapter 3, you infiltrate the Mega Tower through a maze of flooded and roomy tunnels, where you're greeted by mutant flies and Aquatic Mooks.
- Action Bomb: In the Mega Tower you encounter flying drones that pelt you with bullets upon destruction.
- After the End: Before Master Brain’s arrival, humanity was already on the brink of self-extinction thanks to a long war.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: There are goodies hidden behind certain walls, so remember to spam that ”examine” button.
- Ambiguously Human: The enemy soldiers are humanoid, bleed red blood, and speak English in cutscenes... but wear face-concealing helmets, and their origins are left unclear. However, Kingdar’s final speech and the ending cutscene both seem to imply that they are defecting humans who sided with Master Brain.
- Aquatic Mook: In stage 3–2 you encounter enemies in diving helmets who can stay underwater to attack you by surprise.
- Batter Up!: Thornies attack you by bashing your skull in with spiked bats.
- Benevolent Architecture: Boss levels have convenient cover for you to hide behind if circle-strafing doesn’t cut it.
- BFG: The last weapon you find is a rocket launcher that can take out an Elite Mook in just two shots.
- Big Bad: Master Brain commands the enemy army from atop the Mega Tower.
- Boss Arena Recovery: The final boss' room has ammo clips that respawn on the opposite corner of the chamber whenever you take one.
- Bottomless Magazines: Your starting pistol doesn’t use up any ammo.
- Cap Raiser: You can find large ammo containers that increase your ammo capacity.
- Character Portrait: Used in cutscenes, along with an icon showing the speaker's location.
- Combat Tentacles: Wastelord's main method of attacking is to sic green tentacles at you.
- Continue Countdown: Dying gives the player 10 seconds to spend a credit to restart the level. Choosing to continue will make the soldier shown on the screen cock their weapon, while letting the timer hit 0 will make them drop dead for good.
- Continuing is Painful: Dying and continuing resets your max health and ammo to 100, undoing any of the upgrades you've found.
- The Dragon: Kingdar serves as Master Brain's "left hand man".
- Elevator Action Sequence: Kingdar is fought on an elevator moving upwards to the top of the Mega Tower.
- Elite Mook: There are at least two kinds.
- The first is called Jack, officially described as "a fast and lethal soldier, trained to seek and destroy". In practice, however, they're rather slow, and only twice as tough as Thornies. They're mainly dangerous because they're the first enemies you encounter that both approach and shoot.
- Later, you'll encounter large soldiers, referred to internally as "swordar". They have the same design as the Shield Bearing Mooks, only without the shield. While they can't block your attacks, they're just as tough, and like the Jacks, they walk toward you between attacks, only twice as fast.
- Emergency Weapon: Your starting pistol has quite a slow rate of fire and does little damage, but doesn’t use any ammo.
- Every Bullet is a Tracer: Inverted with your bullets which are not Hitscan, but rather invisible projectiles. Played straight with enemies' bullets, which appear as large orbs that flash red and yellow.
- Evil Laugh: Gunbull gives off a deep laugh when attacking your allies offscreen and another one when confronting you.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Master Brain resides in a large black tower that looms over the nearby city.
- Fat Bastard: Gunbull, the first boss of the game, is obese and villainous.
- Faceless Goons: Each enemy soldier wears a helmet that conceals the entire face – except for the eyes.
- Future Copter: The second boss, Warbird, is a helicopter that has a large camera in place of a windshield.
- Gatling Good: Gunbull and Kingdar both use Gatling guns, the latter also having a Spread Shot.
- Ghost City: For most of the game, you travel through a city that has been abandoned, save for Master Brain's occupying army.
- Giant Mook: Bruisers are enemies that appear as big, shirtless, unarmed guys. They have 6 hit points, and their melee attack is twice as strong as that of the Thornies.
- The Goomba: The first enemies you meet are Thornies, who only possess 2 hitpoints and a weak melee attack.
- Heart Container: Throughout the game you can find medkits which extend your life capacity by 10 points each and restore all your hitpoints. Ammo containers likewise extend your ammo capacity.
- Hitbox Dissonance: Several objects have hitboxes that are larger than you would expect, creating unusual side effects:
- Enemy hitboxes are 24 units (or 24 texture pixels, as all walls and enemies have the same pixel scale) wide, making the game fairly generous when it comes to your shots hitting.
- The player uses the same 24x24 hitbox, making avoiding some projectiles tricky, and sometimes even feeling unfair.
- Pickups have a 32x32 hitbox, filling the entire space of the tile each one is found on. It is sometimes possible to pick up an item through a diagonal wall placement due to the game's wall collision handling.
- The Laser Hallway traps have a 32x32 hitbox, even though each laser wall appears to be thin, making traversal of the laser hallways in question extremely finnicky.
- Horns of Villainy: Nearly every enemy wears some sort of helmet adorned with horns.
- Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Unlocking doors uses up collected keys. Their interchangeability comes into play in stage 2–2, where you can choose to open the door leading straight to the Level Goal or to a room containing a machine gun and another key.
- Laser Hallway: Inside Mega Tower are corridors where lasers regularly shoot out of walls, hurting you if you step into them.
- Level Goal: You end each level by pulling a lever on a large black machine, apparently a comms station.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In his dying speech, Kingdar realizes he was just a puppet for Master Brain and implores you to destroy it once and for all.
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Nintendo Hard: You get two continues and no saves. Good luck. - One-Man Army: By the end of the game you may rack up a body count of over 450 kills which are nicely tracked by a counter in the HUD.
- Post-Defeat Explosion Chain:
- As the Warbird gets destroyed, it emits a series of explosions as it falls out of sight, where it crashes.
- Master Brain explodes repeatedly after you deal the final blow to it. A few seconds later, it explodes so violently that the screen fills with flashing red and yellow.
- Psycho Pink: One enemy type (referred to internally as "valkiria") is a girl with a pink helmet and boots, a Little Black Dress, and two knives that she'll stab you with if you let her get close enough. Compared to Thornies, they're a bit tougher, do slightly more damage with each attack, and are twice as fast, making them a decent threat.
- Retraux: The game features 32*32 pixel textures drawn with a limited NES palette, NES chiptune music, and sound effects taken from NES games.
- Shield-Bearing Mook: One enemy type (referred to internally as "shieldar") is a large soldier who stands in one place holding a shield that blocks all of your attacks. They are vulnerable only when firing, which they delay if you keep shooting at them.
- Short-Range Shotgun: The shotgun you find isn’t a very effective long-range weapon thanks to wide bullet spread, but can deal good damage at close range.
- A Sinister Clue: All humanoid enemies carry firearms left-handed.
- Sniper Rifle: The fifth weapon you find is a sniper rifle which offers good accuracy and high damage. It's not much more useful at a distance than the basic rifle or machine gun, however, as all weapons have a (surprisingly short) range at which it's impossible to damage enemies.
- Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: You start with a weak handgun and find (in order) a rifle with a faster rate of fire and better damage, a Short-Range Shotgun, a machine gun with an impressive rate of fire, an accurate and powerful Sniper Rifle and finally a rocket launcher that chews up ammo but kills most enemies in just one or two hits.
- Spider Tank: Among the enemies are crab-like robots that walk back and forth a given line, firing when they see you.
- Teleporting Keycard Squad: Whenever you pick up a key or even a weapon, expect reinforcements in areas you've already cleared of enemies.
- Tin Tyrant: Kingdar, The Dragon, wears golden armour complete with a red cape.
- Universal Ammunition: Except for the starting pistol, all weapons in your arsenal use the same ammo. The difference is in the amount of ammo they use up per shot.
- Video Game Setpiece: Most of the scenery is static, except for two windows on the way to the town hall's exit; once you pick up a key, two Bruisers jump in through these windows leaving broken glass behind.
- Xenomorph Xerox: Wastelord bears a large mouth full of teeth right under a smooth forehead without eyes or a face, resembling a Xenomorph.
