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⚙ SCRAPYARD C64 ⚙

An original game for the Commodore 64, written in 6502 assembly.

Thirty years, not one shift missed. They scrapped you anyway.

Ten floors down, the machine that signed the order is waiting.

They hunt each other by what they are built from.
You are metal.

⚙  THE HEAP FIGHTS ITSELF

You are Kryten 2000, a sanitation droid on a magnetic sorting floor where broken military drones and dead factory bots get dumped. Their logic has rotted. Nothing down here is fighting you in particular — it is fighting whatever it was built to eat.

Every machine carries a material tag, and hunts or fears by tag rather than by name. Heavy Crushers hunt metal, so the plastic Welders stroll past them untouched. Laser Drones shoot anything that moves but bolt from radar — a tag only the Scavenger Tank carries, so they flee tanks specifically and nothing else.

Which puts you in it. You are metal, so the Crushers want you, and you can spend the whole floor standing in somebody else's fight.

TEN POWER CORES CLEARS A FLOOR. THE CORES ARE THE ONES THAT GLOW.

▣  THE WELDERS ARE NOT AFTER YOU

They are after the cores. They will never lay a finger on you and they will empty the floor of the only thing you came for. Rivals, not enemies — the worst kind of company.

The Trash Compactor is the other way round. It cannot be damaged, it destroys any droid it touches, and to you it is simply a moving wall — a hazard that clears the floor for you and never of you. Wait for it and it will open a whole lane.

▲  SHOOT THE CRATE, THEN GO AND GET IT

Spare-parts crates drop through the floor as you work. Shooting one open does not hand you anything — it scatters three parts across open ground, and you have to walk out there and pick them up while the floor is still moving.

Take one and run, or go back for the other two. Each one starts the boost from full, so that is a real decision and not a pickup.

And what is in the crate is a property of the floor, not a lottery. The furnace makes you run hot. The pipe works let you through the walls. You learn the heap, and a crate becomes a reason to want a particular floor.

▤  TEN FLOORS, TEN BOOSTS

• Sorting floor — Magnet. Loose cores walk to you.
• Furnace — Running hot. You kill whatever you touch, and get paid for it.
• Conveyor — Overdrive. Double move rate.
• Press shop — Press drop. The press comes down on the entire floor.
• Scrap stacks — Scrap plating. Two more shields.
• Foundry — Molten shell. Nothing can hurt you.
• Robot yard — Spread fire. Three bolts at once.
• Pipe works — Phase walk. Walk straight through the scrap.
• Circuit hall — System halt. Nothing thinks.
• The crusher — Rapid fire. Shoot twice as fast.

Each floor is its own maze, its own paint, its own roster of machines, and its own animation running in the scrap behind you — arcs, heat pulses, running bands, scanners, data traffic. The walls are machined steel plate with a bolt hole through the middle, and they move nothing but your eyes.

ONE THING HERE STILL GIVES ORDERS. IT IS ON FLOOR TEN.

●  THE MASTERVADER

Every machine still lit on this heap answers to him. He has found a fault in his own system — a droid that takes no orders — and he wants it scrapped.

He says so to your face on floor one, and then you have nine floors of his property to break on the way down to him.

▖  WHAT IS IN IT

• Ten themed floors, each with its own maze, palette, bot roster and live scrap animation.
• Twenty-two machines, every one of them named — crushers, welders, laser drones, compactors, haulers, smelters, spiders, jaws, the scavenger tank, and him. The game says out loud what you just scrapped.
• A faction ecosystem instead of a difficulty curve. Lead a laser drone past a scavenger tank and watch what happens.
• Hardware-sprite explosions, double size, taking the colour of whatever died — and crates that come apart along their own seams rather than borrowing a droid's.
• Original SID music — four tunes, arranged with voice 1 left empty so nothing ever drowns out the shot that killed you. Turn it off in Options if you would rather hear the floor.
• Animated title screen, a story page, full instructions, a boost legend, easter eggs for anyone who had an Omnibot on their Christmas list, and an ending screen for getting out.
• Options for sound, starting floor and difficulty.
• Runs on a stock, unexpanded C64.

▲  CONTROLS

Joystick in port 2, or the keyboard.

• Stick / W A S D — move.
• Fire / SPACE — shoot.
• Walk over a power core to bank it, and over a spare part to start its boost.
• RUN/STOP — skip a floor, or leave a menu page.
• Menus: stick or cursor keys to move, fire or SPACE to choose.