Rats Of The Maze

Infobox VG
title=Rats Of The Maze
width = 300px
developer=Convergent Technologies
publisher=Convergent Technologies
distributor=
designer=unknown
genre=Maze
modes=single player
ratings=
platforms=CTOS, BTOS
media=
requirements=
input=keyboard

"Rats Of The Maze" (or "Rats") is a computer game developed by an unnamed programmer for the CTOS machines in the early 1980s.

Gameplay

"Rats" is a maze game that came in various forms.

1. The version implemented on Burroughs B20 computers (from 1982) ran in multiple shades of green. The player appeared in the form of a person whose legs moved while navigating through the maze. Rats moved while wiggling their tails. There were a custom number (typically 5) vibrating boxes called factories where rats got produced. Shooting factories scored a lot as all living rats of that factory died (as bonus) with the factory. A rat dying (exploding) too close to a factory would destroy the factory too.

Each time a factory was destroyed the newly created rats in the other factories moved faster. The rats of the last factory could run faster than the player. Therefore one was always fighting rats of different speed. Rats could shoot just as fast but bullets there could be stopped with bullets, which is why shooting diagonally from a corner was save (until rats attacked from below). Shooting was from the player's head.

Rats hat a great propensity to sense where the player was, how to get there without dying and guessing the player's movements. Dead players remained where they died and these corpses ("Leave Ghosts") still attracted rats who died when biting the corpse.

Shooting a pregnant rat released mini-rats that were very hard to hit. These mini rats did not shoot themselves and killed by biting the player's feet. They were not as fast as their mothers but very annoying and distracting. They moved so close to a wall that they could not be shot, as a player could not get close enough to the wall. Mini rats saw the bullets coming and moved out of the way. The only way to kill them was to keep them above the head, permanently shoot horizontally so the mini rats will ride on top of the bullets and at the last sub-second shoot diagonally. When they were that close they could not react fast enough and could not avoid the diagonal bullet.

There was a maximum number of items (rats, mini rats, player, ghosts, factories plus bullets) on the game, believed to be 256. When this number was reached factories stopped producing new rats. This thwarted tactics to wait in front of one factory and kill the rats as they leave the factory. In this situation one could also no longer shoot. If this happened, the only solution was to run around the rats (who could not shoot either - only bite) into a factory that exploded and killed the rats of the factory wherever they had run to. The B20 did not slow down if 256 items existed and the rats moved just as fast.

Shooting a rat or a factory counted as score. High Score was 65536 and then the score became negative. This could be achieved by manually selecting a custom maze number (found by a player by chance) where the last rats factory was in a dead-end and could be shot at from a distance. All rats went for the player and died on the way.

Later B20 keyboards had the directional keys in a cross. However, high scores could only achieved on the original keyboard where the arrow keys were arranged like on today's keyboards. Real Rats players kept an old keyboard as very fast sub-second diagonal movements could only be achieved that way. The rest worked as described in the standard implementation below (except bullets bounce off walls).

2. Standard implementation: Player drives a little tank through an endless maze to find and destroy the factories that produce rats. The rats will home in on player but can be destroyed by a single bullet. The more rats exist in the maze, the more sluggish the motion and fire frequency of the player become, so there is a need to hurry to destroy a few of the factories before the sheer number of rats makes winning unlikely. Game is essentially in three colors - bright green, dark green and black. Not counting the eight orientations (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW), the sprites (factories, rats, ghosts, bullets and tank) have two or three images each that indicate movement; i.e. the rats tails wiggle left to right as they move, the tank chains appear to “move”. Screen will have the tank at screen center at all time (the maze “moves” instead). Player only sees about 5% of the maze at a time and can only memorize the places he needs to go if he selects “sneak preview” before the game so he can have one glimpse of the entire maze with an indication of his own position (bright filled rectangle) and that of the factories (dark green rectangle). Tank is steered by pressing and holding arrow key - or arrow keys - along with a “motor key” (diagonal movement is achieved by pressing arrow-up and arrow-right together as well as the “motor key”); firing is done by the arrow keys together with a “fire key”. Player can shoot in all eight directions if he is not moving, he can also fire in the same direction he is moving (by pressing arrow key(s) together with fire and motor keys).

Custom features

The game allowed a set of difficulties to be altered before starting a game:
*Number of factories: 1-99. The more you go up against, the faster the rats will fill the maze, the more difficult it will be.
*Maze density: game uses an algorithm to create the spherical maze so there is always a way to get to the factories (i.e. you will never find a player or factory locked off from the opponent). That way can be tricky, though. Less density means more “open space” without walls, 00% means no walls at all, 99% means all square units in the maze have at least one wall in it.
*Suppress mop-up: Usually, rats that have come out of the factory have to be finished one by one before or after the factory has been destroyed. In you select N, all rats from any one factory will meet their demise once your bullet hits the factory.
*Randomize on death: If player is killed (that is, touched by a rat or killed by bullet), if he still has one of his default three lives he reappears at a random spot in the maze. If N is selected, he will re-appear where he was when he had been killed.
*Leave ghosts? Mini rats (usually four) sometimes will appear where a rat has been killed by player. Those mini ghosts are much faster and harder to hit by player, and of course they go after you.
*Sneak preview: short static bird view of the maze map to help you see where the factories will be
*Are you left-handed? If Y is selected, game will allow a different set of play keys to make it easier for left-handed people
*Play forever: usually, you have a time limit of 500 seconds to finish the game, If Y is selected, you can take all the time you want
*Bullets bounce off walls: If N is selected, bullets will vaporize if they hit a wall. If Y is selected, they will bounce like billiard balls (i.e. back at player when hitting the wall at 90°, off at 45° diagonally – this can be useful if trying to get at a factory that is already surrounded by many rats and you have to shoot from a distance)
*Maze number: there are 9999 mazes per each density setting. Game defaults to a random number each time, but you can always select a number yourself.