The Pretzelves

On December 22, 2021, a Christmas demo of ours, "Merry Twistmas," was shown on a Twitch demo show hosted by a guy by the nickname Mibri, who introduced us as the "Pretzelves."

We laughed about the name and shortly after the idea for a game about these "Pretzelves" was born. The basic idea was a winter game with a cozy feeling. Andy (who initially came up with the idea) and Mikael - both graphicians - started to sketch some nice background graphics for the levels (no one had an idea about what the levels should be but ...). This is when the ice skating idea popped up, and some idea about throwing snowballs at each other (this is a nod to a classic Commodore 64 demo called "Snowball Sunday" by Ash & Dave).

For some time, the project was in hiatus while focusing on other things, but in November 2024 the decision was made to go ahead and try to finish the game in time for the 2024 holidays.  

The 8-bit coding challenge

The code project was created on November 8 and the initial code for handling the movement of the skating Pretzelves was started. The idea was to get the player's movement to have a "floaty" feel, somewhat resembling real ice skating but also having a cartoonish feel to it with sliding turns instead of hard stops as in ice hockey for instance.

Working on an 8-bit computer from 1982 means that anything resembling physics has to be implemented (literally) bit by bit, and the same goes for collision detection and so on. Initially, the idea was to just go right and left, but Rico (being the coder) wanted to have this 2.5D feel to the game and added this when implementing the player controls, and it was decided to go ahead with this.

The original idea, apart from throwing snowballs, also included gathering Christmas presents falling from the sky, but due to the hardware limitations of the Commodore 64 (only eight hardware sprites on the same Y position at any given time), this was changed to having the gifts (and other objects) appearing on the ice randomly and stay there for a short time before vanishing (we are in elf-land after all, so magic is all around).

The gameplay expanded

To up the ante, the two pretzelves will compete to pick up and throw a number of coloured Christmas gifts in their respective Santa sack while the clock is ticking. The colour and number of gifts vary - sometimes each Pretzelf has its own colour to care for, but on other levels, both pretzelves compete for the same coloured gifts.

Anyone who has been skating knows the feeling when bumping into another skater, so let's add this to the mix. If the two players collide at moderate speed, they just bounce off each other. At higher speeds, they get knocked over, lose anything being carried, and remain sitting on the ice for some time. And if one player has higher speed than the other, it can be used to hinder the other player from throwing a gift into the sack, or just stop the other player momentarily. 

Ice, ice, baby ice

To make the skating even more challenging, there are four different ice rinks with some different characteristics:

• A simple ice hockey-shaped rink
• An oval-shaped rink
• A rink with a narrower mid-section
• A rink with a pile of snow in the middle to navigate around

Trouble in Pretzelf land

Another obstacle is a hard object in the shape of an anvil showing up from time to time. Skating into this works in the same way as bumping into the other player; bouncing or getting knocked over and losing anything carried. The anvil appears after flashing for a short while, during this period it does not pose any problem. This is to avoid player frustration of bumping into something appearing out of nowhere.

To make the rink a bit more alive, in later levels, a pesky snowman appears and skates around mainly randomly but also chases the players in turns. Bumping into the snowman will again make the player bounce off or get knocked over and lose anything carried. The snowman will be around for the entire game round, although the idea was to be able to knock it out with a snowball or a bomb, but this was unfortunately not implemented due to time constraints.

Keeping the spirit of cartoons 

As we all know, a competition in cartoons always includes various pranks, and this game should not be an exception. Enter the pranks!

The classical bomb was added to the mix. The bomb appears on the ice and explodes after a few seconds. If a Pretzelf is too close to the explosion, it will fall to the ice and - following the comic feel - look all sooty with smoke appearing, and be immovable for some time. The bomb can, however, be picked up and thrown at the other player (or thrown into either Santa sack to get rid of it faster).

Adding to the prank repertoire some other objects were added:

• Snowballs - the initial idea made a comeback. Pick one up and throw at your opponent to knock them over
• Snails - Pick one up and throw it into either sack to make your opponent have snail speed for some time
• Goofy foot - throw a pretzel(!) into either sack to have the opponent play with reversed controls for a few seconds

A prank that unfortunately did not make it, even though being in quite early stages, is the ability to pick up the other player and throw it into a bag or off the ice. While the picking up and carry/throw part was easily implemented, the handling of what should happen when thrown off the ice was put on the back burner and unfortunately didn't make it.

The clock is ticking

As the game is a race against time, on some levels with extra short time, freezer clocks show up and can be thrown into either sack to freeze the timer for ten seconds. This will be needed and also give the players an opportunity to co-operate - they both need the extra time.

One or two players

While this was initially intended as mainly a two-player game, a one-player mode is also in place, and that requires a computer-controlled opponent. And it should be a worthy opponent as well, so a behavior tree AI was implemented (more on this in another devlog) and turned out to be a very tough opponent, so it had to be dialed down A LOT to make the first levels even funny. 

A difference is that in two-player mode, it is enough that either player wins for both players to move on to the next level. When in one-player mode, the "skate" is over if the computer player (or no one) wins.