Apocalipsis: A Video Game We Tried to Build in the 1990s

It was around 1995 when Marcelo, Camilo, Juan, Edgar, and I started to talk about making video games. We were teenagers moved only by the joy of creating things. We started by sharing simple ASCII animations in BASIC and interactive SCREEN 9 (the QBasic statement to start the “high-resolution” EGA graphics mode) programs with each other. Later we moved to Allegro and built more sophisticated experiments.

I don’t really remember how, but at some point we decided to combine skills and join efforts to design and implement a video game. The video game of our dreams. This video game was inspired by a tabletop role-playing game called Shadowrun. The name: Apocalipsis.

I started the implementation in C. We wanted to see something cool on the screen early on in the project, so I implemented the main menu first. One of my cousins provided the graphics and I composed a simple guitar riff for background music and boom! We had our first screen. I remember the feel of belonging firing up. Since then, I’m convinced of two things when starting projects: define a cool name and get something tangible done as quickly as possible.

The implementation of the game engine was based on tilemaps. A simple algorithm that draws the tiles from a map file (containing a two-dimensional array of numbers where each number represents a “tile”), scrolling logic, basic tiles that give the impression of a side-view perspective, and sprites for the character walking in 8 directions were enough to get a first prototype ready.

The latest version of the code and assets was lost at some point in history years after we all grew up and got busy with life. However, I found a snapshot and managed to run it using DOSBox. Then I found js-dos, which allows me to show you the runnable prototype right here. Only the “Nuevo” option works, so hit ENTER on it and then use right click to make the character move.

Give it a try:

We never finished the game. One of my brothers, Juan, would joke during our game planning and design meetings after seeing us debate all the infinite features we wanted to add to the game. He would say “if you continue like that, you’ll finish the game in the year 2040.” Later, we all started to joke about it and referred to the game as Apocalipsis 2040. Now you can understand the cryptic dedication I wrote for my latest book.