Totally

Overview

This game was written as an experiment while in high school. It was never fully completed, but it reached a reasonably playable state in 1983. This version is a snapshot of that state.

It is a simple multi-level side shooter with a "boss" between levels. It can be played with keyboard or joystick, but a joystick is strongly recommended.  There are 32 "waves" of different looking (similar behaving) enemies with each level requiring that more enemies be dispatched before moving on to the "boss".

Gameplay

The game proceeds in a series of levels. There are 16 core difficulty levels and another 16 levels with differing enemy ship images. You must clear the enemies and beat the "boss" to complete the level. If you complete the level, your remaining fuel is added to your score before you refuel and move to the next level.

Each level has two phases: 'Alien' and 'Boss'. Every level has a different looking alien ship. You have three ships before your run ends. You lose a ship if it runs into any aliens, stars or the walls of the play field.

After selecting (k)eyboard or (j)oystick control, the game begins in the "Alien" phase. Note, one may also use control-B to execute a ProDOS 'BYE' command at this prompt. In this phase, aliens come at your ship from the right side of the screen. To move to the next phase, some number of aliens need to be destroyed.

In the 'ships' corner of the screen you can see how many ships you still have and a picture of this level's alien. Below it, the number of aliens that still need to be destroyed to complete the level is displayed. When that number drops to '00', the game switches to the "Boss" phase.

In the "Boss" phase, your ship is placed in a moving star field. You must avoid all of the stars to stay alive and you cannot destroy the stars. On the right of the play field, there are three bands of "walls" behind which the boss enemy scrolls from top to bottom.

The band furthest to the right scrolls from bottom to top. To be able to hit the boss, you need to fire into the walls, creating holes for your shots to pass through. It only takes one shot to kill the boss, but you must dodge stars while chewing up the walls with your shots. Once the boss is killed, your remaining fuel will drain and you will score points for that fuel.

Then it is off to the next level where the two phases repeat again. If you achieved a high score, you will be able to enter your initials. The top 10 scores are saved in the file TOTALLY.HIGH. You can delete the file to reset the high scores.

Additional Information

Thanks to the great work by Chris Torrence and Michael Morrison, one can run this game directly in your browser via their TypeScript Apple II emulator (Apple2TS). 

• Play Totally directly in the browser

Playing this game on the keyboard can be a challenge, so a physical joystick or emulator with joystick support is generally recommended.

The source code is available on github.