Back to the past

About the game

Back to the past is my entry to the Slick Competition 2011.
The theme for this entry was "Robots are no friend of Magicka", Magicka being a cool game by developer Arrowhead Game Studios, available on Steam and nearly everywhere else :LOL:

To fit the theme I came up with the story of a little Magicka magician who fumbles with one of his last learned spells and is transported way into the future in a world full of hostile robots. The magicka has to collect certain magic letters that will help him to open portals.
His only hope is that one portal will bring him back into the past where a castle full of parties, chicks and wine barrels is waiting for him to return 8-)

Some screenshots

Title screen

In game screen

Another in game screen

Controls

Follow the ingame instructions to play! Most menus, splash screen or title screen can be skipped by pressing Return or Space.

In the game you can guide your magician left and right. This works using cursor left and right or 'A' and 'D'.
Your magician can jump using cursor up, 'Y', 'Z' or 'W'. You can also do double jumps (in air jump) and wall jumping.
Finally you can fire your current spell (only fireball right now) using 'X', Space or the left control key.

You have to collect all MAGICKA letters to open the exit on each level. If the exit is open just walk into it and proceed to the next level.

Level editor controls

Back to the past contains a built in level editor.

Press 'E' on the title screen to enter the editor. Press 'Esc' to leave the editor any time (beware, no safety questions to save your work!) and get back to the title screen.

  • Left mouse click: add selected item at mouse position
  • Right mouse click: delete item at mouse position
  • Mouse wheel: select item
  • Cursor keys: scroll visible area of level on screen
  • '+' and '-': increase or decrease level number
  • F1: load level with selected level number (no safety question!)
  • F2: save level with selected level number in directory levels (no safety question!)
  • T: test your level - the currently built level is started. Press 'Esc' to go back to the editor

Right now you need to edit the message by hand in the level .dat file if you want to have one on level start...

Warning: If you place a turret up or down and there's no block to stop the laser beam the game will
definitely hang and run out of memory...

What about the future?

I plan (and currently already do) to enhance the game a bit more.

What to expect?

  • more levels,
  • better balancing (making the game a bit more easier),
  • moving platforms,
  • more enemies and obstacles,
  • power updates for our little hero,
  • nice little scripted intro and end game scenes,
  • whatever makes it into the feature creep :LOL:

If you have some suggestions or feature wishes feel free to add them to the comments at the bottom of this page!

Download newest version

The newest version of Back to the past is available here! The current version is 1.1!

BackToThePast_1.1.zip

Download game

You can download the playable competition entry here.

Back to the past competition entry version

Download source code

Here you can download the source code of the competition entry version.

Back to the past Java source code