I thought I’d have a bit of fun making a simple manual for my game in the same vein as the old Atari VCS games. I used to love the mini-stories that each game carried. Their ability to suspend your disbelief was awesome. For a kid with a fertile imagination these games and their colourful instruction books were hugely inspirational :)
Hoth Strike
Introduction
Scattered throughout the icy wilds of Hoth are remote rebel outposts that double as safe havens for stranded pilots.
Sadly since the initial AT-AT strike on the rebel base all communication has been lost to the outlying sectors.
Dozens of rebel pilots are lying stranded with no hope of survival !
Worse still the Empire has launched a calculated attack on Hoth to eliminate any surviving rebels and time is running out to rescue your comrades.
You must fly with caution between the numerous outposts rescuing pilots and destroying every trace of imperial aggression.
Objective
1) Rescue the stranded rebel pilots
2) Destroy all alien probes
To pick up a rebel pilot simply fly your speeder directly over them. They will hold on to the speeder until you fly them over the rebel outpost.
If you fail to rescue a single rebel pilot you will lose and the game will end.
Rebel intelligence has gained valuable information on the enemy.
Probe
Floating spy probes with semi-intelligent targetted laser bombs.
Raider
Pest probe that hones in on stranded humans and carries them away producing..
Mutant
..an awful hybrid of twisted metal and human flesh. Mutants turn innocent humans in to rabid killers and will pursue the player across the landscape !
Pod Launcher
Dumb “mother” probe with no weapons just a belly full of radioactive baby pods.
Pod
High energy balls of alien waste that bounce around the level until they collide with the player.
Good luck and may the force be with you …
HTML5 Game Design 
Comments
Some of the old manuals would have very detailed descriptions of the world that you would never find out just playing the game! It adds another layer to the story and immersion of your game. It used to be that these were snippets from ‘Game Bibles’. Game bibles are tombs which serve as a foundation upon which a whole team can make game development descisions, alot of the material from a game bible will never make it to the game but just serves as a nice inspiration point for the designers/developers. I remember reading the story for Alex the Kid in Miricle world, 10 years after playing the original game. All of a sudden the world map made sense! It was really nice to be thrust back into that world and I remembered the adventure I felt when I played it the first time round. I appreciate your efforts to share your thoughts!
Thanks Kevin. I know what you mean. One of my favourite game manuals was the one that came with Ballblazer for the Atari 800XL. As I remember the back story was a transcription of a conversation between two sports commentators. Ballblazing on remote asteroids was an interstellar sport of huge proportions and humans were just breaking through in to the big leagues. You of course were the human !
It was awesome and as you say you’d never have got any of that from just playing the game.
The Eidolon, also from Lucasfilm, carried a similar feel with it’s HG Wells style back story. I absolutely adored that stuff.
For Hoth Strike I tried to emulate the Asteroids booklet that came with the Atari.
My next game, which I’m still planning, will be a bit bigger and will definitely lend itself to creating a great back story.
Thanks for the comments :)
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