Red Earth

Red Earth is a top-down shooter Flash game developed by Jacob Grahn. Released in March 2005, it was the first game he finished and released publicly, though not his first attempt at one.Reply from Mr. Jiggmin to "As Competition": "I would have entered except I have this annoying habbit of skipping steps.
The following were the sequence of thoughts after reading about the AS competition:
I don't know any actionscript!
Hey, look! A competition where the best side scroller wins!
I should do that to learn actionsript!
Or maybe I will try to make a much harder and complex game involving houndreds of lines of code to learn actionscript!
Thats a GREAT IDEA!!! <_<
That project is definitally sitting about 1/4 finished and not functional at all. And I've allready had to ask vector for help once. :lol:". Brackenwood. January 23, 2005.
Red Earth was created for a Lord of the Rings contest on Armor Games where it ultimately received 13th place."my portfolio" - jacobgrahn.com (April 2005 archive)"Gondor Gaming Challenge" - Games of Gondor (May 2005 archive) Its success came as a surprise to Jiggmin, leading to a sequel the following month.
==Plot==
"We believed it to be destroyed thousands of years ago, along with its master.
We believed that the dark had been forever banished from this land, but the ring had deceived us all. No, the ring was not destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom: it was merely placing images into the minds of two helpless hobbits. After the ring escaped its death, Sauron laid in wait for a day when he could strike again. In the meantime our civilization flourished, our technology grew, and our lives were wonderful. When Sauron saw that we had become so lazy and contented from our technologies that we could not fight back, he emerged from his hiding. He retrieved the ring, and with it covered the world in red. Sauron, fearing that the ring may once again be removed from his hand, placed it under heavy protection where he thought no one would find it.
But we have."
==Gameplay==
Players control a tank in a large square-shaped field. Their objective is to retrieve the ring by disabling 4 generators that power a forcefield protecting it.
Each generator is powered differently and can be disabled in any order due to the game's nonlinear nature. As the ring is heavily guarded, players must utilize their turret and cannons to destroy various enemies.
==Enemies==
Enemy	Name 	Attack
 	Floating Mine	Explodes when touched.
 	Flying Blade 	Flies at the player while spinning.
 	Magic Orc 	Launches yellow balls that home in on players.
==Music==
Main article: Songs
Audio	Song 	Length
 	Connection (Chapter 4) – Gillenium	3:42
 	Raiden's Pursuit – surfertmex 	3:08
==Trivia==
*While Jiggmin usually remains neutral on his old games, he later admitted he made Red Earth's controls too complicated and called it a "strange and horrible game" in a 2009 interview with his local newspaper."Games" - mrjiggmin.com (December 2006 archive)"Local game designer wins award". News and Tribune. April 4, 2009.
*Holding spacebar originally sped up the tank instead of firing the cannons, which were split into 2 separate controls."Game". Brackenwood. March 13, 2005.
*An overheat limitation for the turret was considered, but scrapped due to its frequent usage."Reply from Mr. Jiggmin to "Game": "Don't worry jem, I'd never think of adding ammo. :lol: I thought about having an overheat thing, but I decided against it because you pretty much have to be shooting all the time! And there will be waves once I get some event triggers in there.... I'm gunna close myself up in my room and work on this thing all day to get it good enough for the GOG competition. (don't worry, I'll manage to relate it to LOTR). after that I'll keep working on it from time to time until its got every cool thing I can think of.... Which is a lot Then will come the final glorious release!". Brackenwood. March 13, 2005.
*Options for defining controls and making it so pressing "up" would have the tank follow the mouse were planned at one point."Reply from Mr. Jiggmin to "Game": "Gah! it is running really slow for some reason... I'll have to work on that after school. And that makes two complaints as to my movement system so I'll be adding an option where you can change it so up = towards the mouse, and you can define your own keyes for the controlls". Brackenwood. March 14, 2005. Both were later added in Kimblis the Blue.
*It's possible to access Flash's default right click menu by entering settings, which causes multiple glitches.
**Pressing "Play" in-game forces the "You are Dead." screen, but noticeably zoomed out. Other screens retain the reduced size until another game's started.
**Using "Back" at the game over screen returns players to the field with no music playing.
**Clicking "Back" on the title screen starts another loop of the menu theme.
*The game received several changes when it was added to jiggmin.com, including:
**Lower audio quality.
**Updating the Games of Gondor banner to reflect their Armor Games rebrand, though the link itself wasn't fixed.
**Removing Earth from the settings screen, fixing color issues that caused text to blend in.
***Added "low detail" option for slower computers.
**The main menu button is colored white instead of red and fixed at the bottom-left corner of the screen.
**Map, health bar and banner placements are slightly shifted.
*The game was more difficult in its initial release, though was made easier, along with the addition of a minimap, at the request of players."Reply from Mr. Jiggmin to "Finished": "I've updated that game... fixed a few bugs and I made all the difficulties easier(people were having troubles... even on easy). So hopefully you'll be able to beat it now." Brackenwood. March 23, 2005.
==Links==
*Play Red Earth
*Full Screen Link
==References==
Category:Games
Category:Single-Player Games
Category:2005 Games