PlayableThree levels, one file

Tape Loader

A 60th birthday build that opens on a cassette loading screen and drops the birthday person into a bedroom in 1982.

Title screen of the Tape Loader 60th birthday game, with pixel-art lettering reading 60th Birthday Ideas, a Tape Loader nameplate, and the birthday person standing between a cassette and a joystick.

Arrow keys or A and D to move, up arrow or space to jump and climb. C toggles the CRT effect, M toggles sound, P pauses.

Open full screen

A finished build, playing here exactly as it was delivered. It opens the way the machines it remembers opened: a colour-barred border, a byte counter climbing towards 48000, and a line offering to skip the bit everyone remembers.

The name on the title screen is a field, not a graphic, so it is typed rather than baked in. The birthday person is painted into the artwork, and the first level card dates the bedroom to 1982.

Inside the build

Cassette loading screen from the Tape Loader birthday game, showing colour-barred borders and a byte counter reading 12000 of 48000.
The loading screen is the joke and the point. Standing there hoping is the memory this generation actually shares.
Title screen of the Tape Loader 60th birthday game, with pixel-art lettering reading 60th Birthday Ideas, a Tape Loader nameplate, and the birthday person standing between a cassette and a joystick.
The title screen, with the birthday person painted in and the name typed into a real field rather than baked into the art.
Level card from the Tape Loader birthday game reading Level 1 of 3, The Bedroom, 1982, the machine arrives.
Each level opens on a card that dates it. This one is the year the machine arrived.
Gameplay in the bedroom level of the Tape Loader birthday game, with cassettes to collect on shelves and a score of 1100 points.
The bedroom level: posters, a shelf of tapes, the computer wired up on the desk, and fourteen cassettes to find.

In motion

Animated clip of the cassette loading screen in the Tape Loader birthday game, with the byte counter climbing.
The border, the counter, and the wait.
Animated clip of play in the bedroom level of the Tape Loader birthday game, collecting cassettes.
Fourteen cassettes to find, then the portal.

There is another one to play: Battle Chess. Or read how a commission actually runs, from brief to delivery, in the guide to commissioning one.

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Where this one came from.