Hi! You are an alien slave on an alien world, and you will fight to the death against up to 3 friends/enemies to win your freedom and some arms!

Pretty exciting, right?

Did I say arms?

Yes arms! You see, you don't have any arms. Were you born this way? We don't really know, but you will need to use your head to survive. There's a cannon on it (mechanical? biological?) so you can blow each other to bits.

But don't just watch out for your foes. The fighting arena is full of scary things!! Some walls bounce your bullets, some explode, and some walls even kill you. 10 different arenas of goodness. And if you don't like any of them, just use the editor and make your own.

So yea, you're not in a cosy happy place. But the rewards for winning are big. You'd love to be able to scratch your back even once in your life. That is worth a lot.

Manual

Multiplayer SNES setup

For 2 players, a SNES or emulated SNES will work without any additional setup. However a SNES only has two controller ports, so for 3 and 4 players, you will need some way to plug in additional controllers. For this you should use a so-called SNES multitap.

For a physical SNES you can still find plenty second-hand. I bought a Bomberman-branded one. Works like a charm.

Most emulators or FPGA devices will have an option to use a simulated multitap. How to do this will vary from device to device, but the ones I tested (Snes9x, Mesen 2 and MiSTer) all worked without issue.

If you are going to play a 3 or 4 player game an you forget to turn on multitap, you're going to have a bad time.

Controls

• left, right - move
• X - shoot up
• Y - shoot left
• A - shoot right
• B - shoot down

Press two adjacent shoot buttons to shoot diagonally.

• L - parry bullets
• R - jump
• start - pause/unpause

Game behaviour

Matches

Matches are made up of a number of games. The goal of a game is to kill each other with your head-mounted cannon (not to be confused with headcanon). Whoever is left standing last wins the game. If the last gladiators left alive are all killed at exactly the same time, no-one wins, and we try again.

Whoever first wins the amount of games set by the 'games > win' config option, wins the match and wins themselves a sturdy pair of arms for life (conditions apply).

 Shooting

Hold a shoot direction to shoot continuously. Head cannons need to recharge between shots, so it takes a bit of time before you can shoot the next one.

Also, the bullets it shoots are a type of energy bolt that will wear out after a few seconds and they will disappear.

Parrying

You can reflect bullets with your energy shield if you time it right. The energy shield is up for about a quarter of a second, and when a bullet hits the shield, it will bounce off.

Normally bullets can't hit their owner, but when they're reflected by a parry shield, they can.

Out of bounds and spawn portals

When the game starts, each gladiator emerges from their designated spawn portal. However when a gladiator falls from the bottom of the screen, or when they go off the sides or the top, they didn't just escape. We can't let that happen! They're slaves after all. Instead they will spawn randomly from one of the four spawn portals, to keep the game interesting.

HUD

When in a game, at the top of your screen you see a bunch of gladiator heads.

On the left, next to the heart the numbers next to the heads indicate how many lives they have left.

On the right, next to the trophy the numbers indicate how many games you have won.

Configure screen

In between matches and during matches when pressing start you will have access to a config screen. During a match, press start again to return to the match.

In between matches player 1 is always the one in control of the menu.

When someone presses start during a game to access the menu, it will be that person that is in control.

As for meny navigation, move your cursor to the desired option and press A. When you're in a sub-screen, you can press B to go to the previous screen.

During the match some of these options won't go into effect until you start a next match.

Main menu

• At the top, next to the gladiator heads, as you can read from the description, the numbers indicate how many matches each of you have won.
• new match - Start a new match. During a game, this will immediately start a new match.
• edit - Will allow you to edit the game map, also during a game. See the edit section for more info.
• players - The amount of players in the game. Will go into effect when next match starts. For 3 or 4 players, you will need a multitap setup. See the Multiplayer SNES setup section at the top.
• hitpoints - Clear enough I think. Will go into effect the next match.
• games > win - Whoever gets to this amount of games first will win the match.
• level - Choose the level you want to play. If you're in a game, the level layout you were playing will change immediately, but the current player hitpoints and the position of the players and bullets will stay the same.
  
  If you have edited a level, your changes will be overwritten by the new level. Right now there's no way to bring them back, even if you go back to the level that the changes were based on.

Editing a level

If you choose the edit config option, you will be dropped in the tile select screen. This will give you access to all the tile types that are used in the levels.

Every row is made up of different tile, which are of the same type. When you move around with the direction buttons, the text below will tell you the type of the highlighted tile.

Button layout:

• direction buttons - Move cursor across the tiles.
• A - To select the tile and move to the draw screen.
• B - Go back to the main screen
• start - When in a game, exit the config screen.

Tile types

• passthrough - These tiles are the empty space tiles. You can't interact with them. All of them act like empty space, and are decorative, even the  cute dog-like mini daemon.
• wall - No frills solid wall tiles. Players can't pass, and bullets explode when they hit them.
•  bounce wall - These are a little bit more interesting. Players can't pass, but bullets bounce off them.
• bullet pass - Players can't pass, but bullets will go through them like empty space.
• player pass - Reversing the previous tile type, players can go through them, but bullets bounce off them.
• kill void - Movement-wise these function like empty space, but they do damage to players.
• kill block - These act like walls, but they do damage to players when touched.
• destruct wall - Players can't pass. When touched by a bullet, both wall and bullet explode.
• destruct bounce - Players can't pass. When touched by a bullet, the wall explodes and the bullet bounces off. Like Arkanoid.

Draw mode

When you select a tile from the select screen, you will see the level screen in draw mode where you can paint the level with the tile you selected.

Button layout for draw mode:

• direction buttons - Move the cursor/tile around the screen.
• A - Place tile. Hold tile and move cursor to draw the tile as you move around.
• B - Go back to the tile select screen.
• X - Flip your chosen tile horizontally.
• Y - Flip your chosen tile vertically.
• start - When in a game, exit the config screen.

You move the caret around the screen with the direction buttons.

Where's the source code?

https://github.com/stuij/unarmed

Acknowledgements

All coding, graphics and music by me, except for the following, for which I'm very grateful:

software

• Terrific Audio Driver by undisbeliever. Great piece of software. MML turns out to be quite fun. Will hopefully explore it and the SNES sound system when I have a bit more time on my hands.
• RAM blanking code and CMake project code (and maybe some more snippets) by georgjz at Github
  
• some misc library routines (in modified form) by nesdoug

graphics

• Both intro screen graphics made by Paco specifically for this game. Thanks so much! And also for brainstorming  the game.
• Stencilled part of the background layer of City by Stone Games
• Boxy Bold font by Clint Bellanger, but modified by cemkalyoncu, andWilliam.Thompsonj and also devurandom who added lowercase. At Open Game Art

sound

• music samples supplied by Loafspell and nesdoug
• music samples by nesdoug (Doug Fraker) at his own website
• explosion by BitingChaos at Open Game Art
  
• hurt sound by qubodup at Open Game Art
• shield deflect by qubodup at Open Game Art
• gun shot by Michel Baradari at Open Game Art
• explosion by Michel Baradari at Open Game Art
• jumping, landing sound by leohpaz at Open Game Art
• dying sound by HaelDB at Open Game Art

misc

• Thanks to all the play testers! You people are awesome, and some of you gave some really good tips and uncovered some bad bugs.
• Thanks to the organisers for the game jam! I would never have done this if I wouldn't have bumped into this jam by accident on that fateful night in Feb.
• Thanks to the SNES dev Discord. Was really fun making this game alongside of you and thanks for answering a bunch of my questions.