At the start of the year I had spotted an online competition to create a themed artistic ‘digital-piece’ based around a specific horror theme. The competition itself garnered thousands of entries, and those that stood out were game based projects much like what I had created myself. I am very pleased to now be able to share with you what I created, which was a homage to a classic 90s game system all built using Articulate Storyline.
Many of you may remember the Barcode Battler handheld gaming system released in the early 90s. This was a turn based battler game, and was around long before we had the likes of Pokémon, though the Barcode Battler itself was not extremely popular in Europe and the States. It was however very popular in Japan where it actually caused a shortage of a particular cereal product in supermarkets which players had discovered the barcode for generated one of the most powerful player characters in the game! (https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/3imq8q/barcode_battler_1992/)
My entry into the online competition is a nostalgic homage to that classic gaming system but with character cards based on the horror theme set by the comp. The version that you can check out on the Discover eLearning website, which is 100% playable by the way, is a different version themed on the ‘eLearning Heroes’ brand, but the gameplay remains the same.
Character stats are generated once the player has moved the card along the slider in Storyline, and the player and opponent ATT and DEF stats are all used in a calculation that is conducted behind the scenes to generate the random attack score when the player lands a successful hit, so no two combinations of player and powerup card generate the same result!
If you like the game, or have any memories of the Barcode Battler to share, then please leave a comment below!
