Scout The Stray (C64)

This game runs perfectly on both PAL and NTSC models of the Commodore 64.

Gameplay

The character that the player will have to control is Scout, a stray dog, who has to go through different mazes munching on the bones scattered in them and avoiding being captured by the dog catchers who are chasing him. A level will end when all bones have been eaten.

The game has 32 levels to complete. However, it must be said that the mazes are procedurally generated, therefore, with each new game, the player will find himself facing ever-changing levels. As the player progresses through the levels, the speed of the chasers will increase more and more until he reaches the last level.

As a defense weapon, Scout has "barks" at his disposal, with which he can scare the dog catchers who will run away from our hero for a few seconds. As long as the enemies are scared, they are completely harmless. However, the barks cannot be used repeatedly, since about 3 seconds will have to pass before being able to bark again (at the top left of the screen there is a small bar that indicates the "charge" status of the bark).

For every certain number of bones devoured, a "magic" ball will come into play which, depending on the color, will perform different actions once collected. The red ball will activate the “x3” (the bones eaten later will be worth 30 points instead of 10). The blue ball will make all the enemies run away just like when using the bark. The purple ball will activate a letter inside the writing EXTRA placed at the top center of the screen; once the writing is complete, the player will earn a life. The cyan ball will make the dog catchers disappear for a few seconds, after which they will re-enter the entrance gate of the maze as if nothing had happened. Finally, there is a ball that changes color and that will give a different score depending on it (brown = 1000, green = 2000, yellow = 3000).

Options

You can choose between 4 difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert.

You can turn on/off the in-game music. When the music is turned off, additional sound effects are active.

Controls

Joystick in port 2.

Joystick lever = Move Scout in the four directions.
Fire button = Bark.

While playing, press F7 to pause or F1 to stop the game and go back to the title screen.

While the top scores are showing, press F1 to reset the ranking.

History

Version 1.0

• First release.

Version 1.1

• Added in-game music.
• Some minor fixes.