Midnight Witch is an original Halloween shooter for the Tandy Color Computer 3. A witch on her broomstick flies through a moonlit graveyard, a haunted forest, a pumpkin patch and a bubbling bog while the screen scrolls along. She fires magic bolts at bats, ghosts, zombies, owls, crows and worse, and each stage ends with a boss fight. A second player can join in at any time. It runs on the engine from my Ghosts 'n Goblins and Metal Slug demakes. The graphics, music and sound effects are all new, and the music and levels stream from a CoCoSDC.
About the game
Midnight Witch started from the Ghosts 'n Goblins background animation on this site. Instead of a knight walking along the ground, a witch flies anywhere on the screen while the stage scrolls. It keeps that chunky pixel-art look, but everything in it is new: the graphics are drawn in code, the music is composed for the game, and the sound effects are synthesized.
What's in it so far
- Stage 1, the Graveyard: bats, ghosts, jack-o'-lanterns that fire back, imps that dive at you, zombies climbing out of their graves and lobbing skulls, ravens, flaming skulls, and bats that sneak up from behind. The stage now has grassy hills with ladders and headstones, a forest of big leafy trees, and a castle with red-roofed towers at the end.
- Boss: the Gravekeeper. A tall, hooded skeleton with glowing green eyes, carrying a lantern and a shovel. His lantern lights up the spot where his green fire is about to land, and he digs up skulls and throws them at you. His skull is his weak spot, and you can only hit it while his hood is down.
- Stage 2, the Whispering Woods: a dark forest under a pale moon. Bare branches and brambles reach into your flight path (they block your bolts too), owls blink on their perches and swoop when you get close, and red mushrooms puff spores at you.
- Boss: the Elder Treant. A giant gnarled tree with yellow slit eyes. He sweeps his branch-arms across the screen and drops berry bombs. Once he's badly hurt, roots burst up out of the ground. Hit his mouth while it glows and he roars.
- Stage 3, the Pumpkin Patch: a farm under an orange harvest moon, with a windmill and barns on the hills. Corn walls and strings of lanterns block your way. Crows, husk wraiths, jack imps, scarecrow walkers, gourd skulls, flaming jacks and gourd spitters attack.
- Boss: the Scarecrow King. He hops out in front of a red barn, sends crows from his sleeve and throws fire seeds. Then his pumpkin head flies off at you and back again, and that's the only time you can hit it.
- Stage 4, the Bog of Bubbles: a swamp under a sickly green moon, with cypress trunks, hanging moss, cattails and bubbling water. Herons perch on the stumps, and moss curtains and snags block your path.
- Boss: the Bog Mother. A huge mossy face that rises out of the swamp. She lashes out with a vine arm, drips slime and sends tentacles up out of the water.
- Two players: a second witch in a red cloak joins in at any time. Player 2 uses W A S D or the left joystick, and either player can rejoin while the other is still flying. The game ends when both are out.
- Power-ups: each potion raises your power a level, up to seven times, from a single spark to witch fire, violet magic and finally a fan of five comets. Losing a life takes all of your power away. You also have three magic bursts per life that clear the screen.
- Pause menu: press P to pause and set the music and sound effect volumes.
- Score, top score, and extra lives at 20,000 points and every 50,000 after that. After the last stage you start again, a round harder.
- Original music for every stage and boss fight, streamed from the SD card: a recorded graveyard theme, a flute-and-harp tune for the woods, a fiddle-and-banjo jig for the pumpkin patch and a swampy organ-and-tuba swing for the bog. The music is now about twice as loud as before.
Two more stages are planned, each with its own boss: a ghost town with the Phantom Sheriff, and a blood-moon castle with the Crimson Sorceress. In MAME it runs at 25–30 fps with one player, boss fights included. With two players busy on screen it can slow down a bit.
Screenshots
Captured from the current build running in MAME's CoCo 3 (512K) driver with an emulated CoCoSDC. Click any screenshot to enlarge it, then use the arrows (or your arrow keys, or swipe) to flip through the rest.
Download and run
You need a Tandy Color Computer 3 with 512K and a CoCoSDC. The game is three files: WITCHSDC.DSK (the boot disk), WITCH.DAT (the graphics, stages, music and sound, about 3 MB) and STARTUP.CFG (for self-boot). WITCHSDC.DSK and WITCH.DAT must come from the same download.
Option 1: Self-boot (starts by itself at power-on)
- Copy WITCHSDC.DSK, WITCH.DAT and STARTUP.CFG to the root folder of the SD card (not a subfolder).
- Power on the CoCo 3. The SDC mounts WITCHSDC.DSK and runs the game automatically.
- STARTUP.CFG replaces any STARTUP.CFG already on the card (for example one that boots another game). Back it up or rename it first if you want to keep it. Only one game can self-boot at a time.
Option 2: Load it from SDC Explorer (SDCX)
- Copy WITCHSDC.DSK and WITCH.DAT to the root of the SD card. STARTUP.CFG isn't needed.
- In SDC Explorer, mount WITCHSDC.DSK in drive 0.
- Exit to BASIC and type:
RUN"LOADER
At the title screen, press fire to start.
Controls
| Action | Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Fly | Arrow keys or right joystick | W A S D or left joystick |
| Fire magic bolts | SPACE or button 1 | F or button 1 |
| Magic burst (clears the screen) | X or Z, or button 2 | G or button 2 |
| Join the game | Fire | Fire |
| Pause / volume menu | P (up/down picks music or effects, left/right sets the volume, P plays on) | |
A joystick turns on once you press one of its buttons.
Midnight Witch is an original game by Tequestafarian. Its graphics, music and sound are all its own.