THE SEUCK VAULT
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BAPHOMET by Anthony Burns
Here is Anthony's latest Sideways SEUCK game, with the ZIP file containing both the game and the data file. Richard Bayliss has released an enhanced version to download from http://tnd64.unikat.sk/f_b.html.
NOTE: This game contains nudity and situations that some may found offensive.
STORY:
Far into the future, after several increasingly horrendous wars, the leaders of the surviving nations entrust the responsibility of running society to a scientific committee. Advanced technology proliferates into every aspect of life, bringing prosperity and many years of peace … until the system is infiltrated.
The Elder Ones are a race of advanced, intelligent, extra-dimensional, and completely amoral beings that conquered the Earth in prehistoric times but were later decimated by careless over-reliance on their technology (when the Shoggoths – their bio-engineered slave creatures – violently rebelled). Now that the human race is vastly reduced in numbers, and totally dependent upon their own centrally organised computer system, the surviving Elder Ones see an opportunity to turn the tables...
They summon an extremely powerful being from their own dimension – the dreaded Baphomet – who seizes control of the central computer complex and reconfigures human society to its own warped pattern. Humans are reengineered into hideously altered slave beings, or used as raw materials in biomechanical constructions. A few refugees manage to hide out in wilderness areas and attempt resistance activities, but they can achieve little against the powerful defence systems, and most would-be saboteurs are killed or captured.
Such has been your fate, and now you find yourself a captive within the biomechanical conversion centre, gradually being rebuilt as a brainwashed slave of the enemy. However, your attempt to sabotage the centre has some effect: the machinery fails before its task is complete, leaving your mind unaffected, but leaving you trapped, mutilated, and at the non-existent mercy of the defence system.
An awful situation, yet a unique opportunity: for you know that if you can fight your way to the secondary conversion centre, you can program the machinery there to grant you combat enhancements. Once equipped with the weapons of the enemy, you stand a chance of infiltrating the main control centre, of destroying Baphomet itself, expelling its appalling influence from the world, and returning to your normal state. Not a very good chance, admittedly...
INSTRUCTIONS:
This is a one-player game, but it uses both joysticks. You start the game on foot, using joystick port two (If you try to start using port one, you will not be able to progress beyond the opening screen). If you can get past level 2, you will be instructed to switch to port one. From this point on, you will be flying, and the game will scroll automatically.
When you are told to “stand by” do not move the joystick, or you risk colliding with dangerous areas of the background. These have been placed in such a way as to make certain levels inaccessible to the “walker” and others to the “flyer” so that they can only be on-screen at the correct time.
When you are on-foot, you fight at close range, in the direction you are pointing. Do not venture off the grey walkways: the infrastructure of the conversion centre is deadly to the touch, and keep clear of the walkway edges where the passage is narrow. Similar caution applies when you are flying: steer clear of anything that is not plain sky (unless it is a bonus pickup). When you are flying, you fire forwards, with a long-range weapon.
ADVICE FOR EMULATOR USERS:
This game uses a greyscale graphics style that makes use of all three of the grey shades in the SEUCK palette. These will only show up correctly if your emulator is switched to a PAL TV-style graphics mode. If you use the default graphics mode (in CCS64, at any rate) then white and light grey will appear the same, obscuring some of the graphics.
ENEMIES:
Hunters – These troops are biomechanically reengineered humans, little more than remote-controlled zombies (though armed to the teeth, alas). Slow and weak, but their gauss rifles pack a lethal punch and can fire in any direction (depending on the direction they are walking in).
Shoggoths – A weaker, more subservient version of the genetically engineered monstrosities that destroyed the Elder Civilisation, but still a dangerous and disconcerting opponent. These fast, amorphous creatures lay a trail of deadly organic “mines” as they slither along. Do not allow them to cut off your route ahead.
Automatic Flamethrowers – Indestructible, so just make sure to time your progress between their blasts carefully.
Disposal Chutes – Randomly-firing installations that will dispose of you, given half a chance, but they can be quickly disabled with one attack.
Gorgons – Static but strong opponents. Very dangerous to engage at close range, so concentrate on avoiding the electrical discharges they fire from their eyes, in random directions.
Elder Ones – These radial, tentacled, flying beings will attack you if you should manage to escape from the conversion centre. They are not a match for the upgraded weaponry you intend to face them with, but that is no reason to invite close airborne encounters with them...
Furies – Armoured, floating creatures that fire in random directions. They take two shots to destroy, so make them count...
Hellhounds – Weak, but very aggressive wolf-headed creatures that guard the final approach to the control centre. They fire in a fixed direction at a very rapid rate.
Newborns – These mutated creatures exist for one purpose only: to fly at you, then to explode violently, creating lethal shockwaves. If you can shoot them before they go critical, however, their explosion will be harmless.
Lindworms – Segmented, dragon-like cyborgs that patrol the infrastructure of the control centre. Their heads are their most dangerous part (and the toughest to destroy).
Also...
Pentagrams – Collect these rotating symbols for large bonuses, but be careful, as they have a tendency to be located in very dangerous areas.
And be particularly wary of...
Lilith – The guardian of the conversion centre, who will try to block your exit physically (as well as trying to fry you to perdition with her high-voltage stare).
Oni – This giant goblin-like monstrosity will try to bar your progress into the main control centre. It is equipped with a rapid forward-firing weapon and also shoots electricity randomly from its eyes.
Baphomet – You will have to fight long and hard for the dubious privilege of a duel with this evil entity, and you may wish you hadn’t tried … If its flame breath doesn’t get you, the twin electronic discharges from its eyes might well do the trick. Destroy it, however, and the whole system it controls will descend into chaos, freeing the human race from its enslavement (and allowing you to escape unscathed).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Inspired by the fiction of H P Lovecraft. Especially “At the Mountains of Madness” (1931).
Also inspired by the art of H R Giger, and particularly the following paintings...
Baphomet, Passage XXIV, Goho Dohji, Lilith, Witches’ Dance, Landscape XIX, Birthmachine, Safari, Li, Li II, Necronomicon (title page), Cataract, Illuminatus I, The Magus, A. Crowley (The Beast 666), and the designs for the music video to “Now I Know You Know” by Debbie Harry (from her album Koo Koo, 1981).