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It’s Game of the Month time again! For the uninitiated, Game of the Month is a programme for Evercade VS/VS-R, Evercade EXP/EXP-R and Evercade Alpha users where you can download a new, independently developed game for free every month between April and December. You can enjoy the full version of the game without limits while it remains available. Early next year, all of this year’s Game of the Month titles will be collected together and popped on a cartridge with a few exclusive extras; that’ll be Indie Heroes Collection 4, and we estimate it’ll be with you around February 2025.
Game of the Month for December 2024 is Murtop, another modern retro-style game that has been natively ported to Evercade. That means that rather than running via an emulated vintage system, it’s running directly on the Evercade hardware, allowing for slick performance, smooth gameplay and features that wouldn’t have been possible on classic consoles and home computers. Make no mistake, though; Murtop is very much a retro game at heart, and absolutely would not have looked out of place in the arcades of the early ’80s. Note that as Murtop is a native game, the usual Evercade in-game menu that normally appears when pressing the Menu button does not function. You can customise the game options and exit back to the main Evercade menu from the title screen.
Murtop is the creation of “hiulit”, a developer from Barcelona, Spain. Like last year’s native hit Donut Dodo, Murtop is built in the Godot engine, a popular choice of development environment for today’s indie scene thanks to its (relative) ease of use, flexibility and cross-platform compatibility — that, and it’s free to get started with, making it ideal for solo developers or small groups who don’t have vast amounts of corporate resources to draw upon.
Much like Donut Dodo, Murtop is a game that was specifically designed to pay homage to early’ 80s arcade games. Its creator describes it as a blend between Namco’s Dig Dug and Hudson’s Bomberman, but to get too hung up on such comparisons is to do Murtop something of a disservice. It very much has its own identity, and plays very distinctly from its two cited inspirations.
In Murtop, you take on the role of Murti the rabbit, and your job on each stage is to eliminate all the mole-like enemies. You can accomplish this in one of two ways: blow them up with a bomb, or drop a rock on their heads. The latter is worth more points, but is significantly harder to accomplish. In both instances, you’ll multiply the points earned for a successful kill if you’re able to take out more than one enemy at the same time.
There are a few things you’ll need to get to grips with in order to succeed at Murtop. Firstly is the fact that Murti expels bombs from… well, from her butt. This means that when you drop a bomb, it appears behind Murti rather than directly where she is sitting. As such, you’ll need to pay attention to the direction Murti is facing in order to ensure you place her bombs correctly.
Secondly, when a bomb explodes shortly after it is laid, its explosion will reach all the open spaces on the board that are connected to it horizontally and vertically. This means that strategically digging out tunnels before laying bombs allows you to set off huge explosions and catch multiple enemies in the blast — but you should be aware that Murti is just as vulnerable to explosions as the enemies are. Make sure you step aside from the impending blast in order to stay safe; the only time you can get away with being caught in an explosion is if that explosion also takes out the last enemy on the board.
When it comes to the rocks, causing them to drop is a simple matter of moving underneath them; prior to Murti passing beneath them, they will remain fixed in place, even if there is some dirt already dug out beneath their starting position. There’s a small delay between Murti moving underneath a rock and it actually falling, which allows her enough time to get out of the way; mastering this timing is key to successful rock-dropping action.
There are three types of enemy to contend with in Murtop. Prior to each stage beginning, you’ll see Murti being pursued by the types of enemy you can expect to see in the upcoming stage.
“Baldy” enemies are the first you’ll encounter, and these will chase Murti down if she enters their line of sight. They will initially enter an “Alert” state, and after a moment begin pursuing Murti. You get the most points for eliminating a Baldy that is completely unaware of Murti’s presence, slightly fewer for an “Alert” Baldy and fewer still for one that is actively pursuing her.
“Talpy” enemies come next, and these function in a similar way to the Baldies in that they can be “Alerted” by entering their line of sight. Their behaviour is a little different, however; a moment after being Alerted, they will toss a rock at her rather than pursuing her. Once again, you get the most points for eliminating an unaware Talpy, then fewer for an Alerted one, then fewer still for one that is actively attacking.
The final type of baddie you’ll encounter is the “Star-Nosed”. You don’t have to defeat these little whatnots to finish a stage, but they will make your life a pain by occasionally stomping and causing a large boulder to fall into the play area. This will roll around, potentially clearing out additional patches of dirt, so be sure to stay well out of its way. Good situational awareness is essential!
Bonus points are earned at the end of each stage for how many carrots you collected before beating the level, how much time you had remaining and how many lives you have left. There’s also a special 5,000 point bonus if you beat a stage within 15 seconds, and numerous hidden bonuses to uncover. Every five stages is a special bonus level where you must avoid rocks and collect carrots, and you’ll get extra lives every 75,000 points. There are 256 levels in total, and it’s possible to reach an arcade-style “kill screen” with sufficient skill, luck and patience. You’ll probably need a bit of practice before you get there, though. In the meantime, scan the QR code that appears after attaining a high score with a mobile device to see how you rank on the worldwide cross-platform Murtop leaderboards.
Got all that? Then you’re ready to play Murtop. See you on the high score table!
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To get started with Murtop and the Game of the Month programme for 2024, connect your Evercade VS/VS-R, EXP or Alpha to the Internet via the Network option in Settings, then perform a system update to the latest available firmware version.
When you’re all updated, you’re ready to go — start the game through the VS/VS-R, EXP/EXP-R or Alpha logo on the left of the main Evercade menu and prepare for some explosive pooping, no fast food tacos required.
Note that we always recommend Evercade users keep their consoles up to date as a matter of course to ensure maximum compatibility with new cartridge releases and implement fixes to known issues. Please see the following Evercade support pages for full patch notes; all new firmware updates are cumulative, so update once and you’ll see all the benefits.
Evercade EXP Patch Notes
Evercade EXP-R Patch Notes
Evercade VS Patch Notes
Evercade VS-R Patch Notes
Evercade Alpha Patch Notes
Please note that saves from the Game of the Month edition of Murtop will not carry across to the Indie Heroes Collection 4 cartridge when that releases in February of 2025 (TBC).
Quelle: Pete Davison / Blaze Entertainment