Rabbit Escape (a bit like Lemmings) v0.1 released for Linux, Windows and Mac

Today I am releasing the first version of my new game, Rabbit Escape.

It’s an arcade puzzle game inspired by Lemmings and Pingus, but intended to be simpler and easier to control on a mobile device.

Your task is to guide a party of rabbits from the entrance to the exit by dropping tokens in front of them that give them special abilities such as building bridges or climbing walls.

Here’s what it looks like:

Rabbit Escape

An Android version will be coming soon, but for now I’m releasing the desktop version for Linux, Windows and Mac.

There are 60 levels, and I’m hoping people will be sending me lots more soon!

I plan to write a level editor, but for now you can create your own levels by editing text files.

The game is Free Software under GPL v2, and the graphics, levels etc. are released under the non-commercial Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence. The choice of a non-commercial license for these parts is intended to prevent people copying the game wholesale onto an app store and making money from it. If you want to use it under a different license, please contact me.

I plan to charge the minimum price on the Android store, and offer the desktop version for free (providing an opportunity for donations).

Please try it out and let me know how you get on. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but the game mechanics work, and it seems like it might be fun.

If you’d like to contribute, I’d be very excited! You can find the code at github.com/andybalaam/rabbit-escape.

Android development – saving state

Series: Setup, Menu, Drawing, non-Android, Working, Saving state.

Android apps like Rabbit Escape need to save their state when asked, and restore themselves later. This happens when you rotate the screen, and could happen at various other times. Here’s how I handled that in Rabbit Escape:

Android development – Rabbit Escape really working on Android

Series: Setup, Menu, Drawing, non-Android, Working, Saving state.

Up until now, you weren’t sure to believe my promises that Rabbit Escape really was going to be an Android game, since I hadn’t actually got it running on Android. Well, the wait is over:

Android programming – a non-Android, Android Game

Series: Setup, Menu, Drawing, non-Android, Working, Saving state

We’re planning to write an Android game. So why would we deliberately avoid Android while we’re writing it? To make sure we’re not overly-dependent on the Android ways of doing things, and are able to run our tests etc. on the local machine: