| freeware |
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| fruits |
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Let's begin with the most important thing first: The world wide hiscore list! If you want to see your name here, please send a mail to "fruits (at) madshi (dot) net". Please attach your "fruits.hsc" file, so that I can check that you're not lying! Please also let me now under which name you want to be listed.
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Thanks to Claes Norreen for his help in improving Fruits. He has created all extra screens like intro, game over, hiscore etc.
A bit of history: Some days ago I loved to play "Fruity Frank" on the "Schneider CPC". When I moved from the CPC to the "Atari ST", I didn't found this game, so I programmed it myself. It was my first big project and I learned a lot from it.
Then I bought my first IBM compatible computer, a 286 with a 40 MB hard disk! Wow... And again I didn't find this game. So I converted my Atari Modula-2 sources to Turbo Pascal.
Unfortunately DOS is dead, so I converted the game again, this time it runs in Windows, utilizing DirectX.
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Ok, now the rules:
At the beginning of each level you see a big orchard with two corridors, one horizontal and one vertical. You find yourself in the bottom of the vertical one.
All you have to do to enter the next level is collecting all the fruits (except the apples). At the crossing of the corridors there is a big "grease mark", which is the home of the "nose monsters". If you clean up this grease mark, you destroy automatically the home of the nose monsters, so no new nose monsters can be created during the rest of this level. However, in the moment where you clean up the grease mark, there comes the "bonus monster" from the top of the ceiling. So hurry to get away! The nose monsters are slower than you, but they like you, so they are attracted by your presence. Though they only want to play with you, you have to stay away from them, because you've unfortunately a "nose monster allergy". In the moment where you destroy their home, they're so stunned, that they stay paralyzed for a while. Normally the nose monsters are not so gluttonous that they eat through the turf (so that new corridors are created). But if you lock them up so firm that they can't move at all, they get angry after some seconds and don't care about corridors any longer for a while. The bonus monster doesn't have any interest in you. It's so dumb that it simply ignores the fact that you're perhaps trying to kill it! Unfortunately that makes it so difficult to calculate where it is running to. Each time you kill the bonus monster, the next brother of the bonus monster arrives at the top of the vertical corridor! The first bonus monster has four brothers.Sometimes there are falling some plums from the top of the screen. When they hit the ground they mutate to the "red plum monsters". They are as fast as you are and really very blood hungry. So keep distance! If they come near you they don't ask about corridors very much! If you're spending too much time at collecting all the fruits, there falls a strawberry from the ceiling. If it hits the ground there comes a "hedgehog" out of the strawberry, which is much faster than you are. And it is so sporty that it comes directly to you! No roundabout ways. No following up corridors. It runs on the shortest possible way to you. So if you haven't collected the last fruit, hurry! You've barely a chance to escape the hedgehog!
The aim of the game is NOT to enter the next level as fast as possible, since the level after the 7th level is again the 7th level! Instead of only collecting the fruits you should try to kill as many monsters as possible, because you earn much more points by killing monsters than by collecting fruits. However, don't spend too much time at chasing monsters and too less time on collecting fruits, since the hedgehog is coming soon!
Of course the monsters are not too friendly. That's why you - clever as you are - have taken a dangerous bouncing ball with you! But be cautious: Once the ball is bouncing through the corridors (and it surely has no built in aiming electronic :-) you have nothing in your hand to defend yourself! So if in this situation a monster is facing you, the only thing you can do is run away. If the ball does not find a monster it can kill, you can go and pick up the ball again. Don't be afraid - the ball doesn't kill you, only monsters. If it finally found (and killed) a monster, you'll have to wait some seconds (not too short of course) until you get a new ball. (Just a hint: your body color is different if you have a ball in your hand).
If you think just throwing a ball is too easy, you can also use an apple to kill monsters. You can't collect apples, just move them to the left and to the right. If you move an apple into a vertical corridor, it suddenly falls down and kills everything under it - including yourself. If you walk directly under an apple the ceiling gets thin and can't hold the weight of the apple any longer. So go away as fast as you can! The apple slowly breaks through the ceiling! If you still stand under it, it will definitely kill you! That's the most common dead cause - a special kind of suicide... :-) However, if a red plum monster if following you, just go under an apple and it will probably kill the red plum monster for you.
You get points for collecting the fruits. But you can get much more points by killing monsters! These are the points you can receive:
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And you can even earn more points by killing multiple monsters with one apple throw! E.g. if your apple kills 3 nose monsters and finally 1 red plum monster with one throw, you'll get 40 + 2*40 + 4*40 + 8*100 = 1220 points for this throw! Once I killed 8 nase monsters with one throw. So the last nase monster brought me 5120 points!
In the beginning you've 2 reserve lifes. After earning 1000 points you get a third one. Then after every 10.000 points you get a new reserve life.
In the first level there are maximal 2 nose monsters chasing you and 1 red plum monster. In the 7th level there're maximal 8 nose monsters and 4 red plum monsters...
Use the cursor keys to move around the labyrinth. With the [Ctrl] key you can throw the ball.