Highway Hobo is the game formerly known as ‘Bummer‘ aka, the Frogger type game featuring a drunken bum. If that’s not a premise that makes you immediately interested, then we don’t know what will.
Out now on the Android market (or Google Play as we must now call it), from the team at Braindead Ape, Highway Hobo challenges players to stagger, muttering down the middle of a busy road – in the best tradition of drunken bums, avoiding the traffic and picking up discarded items. Not unravelled cassette tapes or individual shoes, as you’d find in the real world, but bottles of generic booze type alcohol to maintain that pleasant buzz.
Of course, the booze has an additional benefit. When your booze meter maxes out, you can belch explosively – clearing all oncoming traffic out of your way, scaring small children, killing scurrying hedgehogs and lifting the paint from the road.
It’s a distance game. Like Cannabalt or Jetpack Joyride, the goal is to get as far as possible.
The team are promising updates, additional content, new game modes and all manner of new stuff in the coming months.
Additionally, Highway Hobo is just the first title in a wider family of linked games, based around a bunch of loveable hobo types, which Braindead Ape is now working on. The plan is to have your own customised bum who will feature in a number of different game types, creating a sort of tramp platform if you will.
The Braindead Ape team is looking for feedback, input and responses from players. If you’re an Android owner, download the game, give it a go and let the team know what you think.
It’s quite simply… staggering!
What?
I like the game and idea behind it although I would of called it Jakey Junction :). I like the graphic of the hobo and the whole idea behind the burp.
However if they want feedback:
1) I can’t seem to get comfortable with the tilting/control – I am using an HTC phone if it helps.
2) I don’t hear any background music (just traffic sound) – is it in an option (e.g. muted)
3) Why isn’t the traffic going the opposite way on the other side?
4) Hit areas on the cars are fine but a little off on the bottles.
5) I got a call whilst playing (therefore the game app is suspended) – when I launched the game again I can hear the traffic noise (i.e. gameplay sounds) but screen is blank. I had to kill the process and restart.
Excellent feedback Zarrar. Thank you. I’ll make sure the team see that asap. Cheers, Brian… P.S. Can I drop you an e-mail? I have a nice lady who’d like to feature you in an up-and-coming event.
Hi Zarrar,
Thank you for the feedback. I am Johnny, the programmer at Braindead Ape.
1. Yeah, I’m aware the calibration needs work, I can promise this will get improved.
2. Sadly the musician we were initially working with didn’t work out. We are now working with a new musician and I’m pretty sure he’ll have some amazing music for the next update.
3. Ah, there is a long story behind this 😀 . In the first version we started off with having the cars go different directions like you said, and the camera would follow the hobo in a way to ensure he’s always in the middle.This caused a problem because you didn’t have enough time to react to cars.
So we tried making the camera always scroll, and the hobo had to keep up. Since the camera movement was independent of the hobo movement, you could position your self anywhere you want on the screen. On paper it sounds like a good idea, but it just turned out to be not fun.
The next thing we tried was to make the camera shift depending on if you are on the bottom or top lane. The constant moving of the camera got annoying really quickly.
So here we are, hobo offset to the left slightly and the cars going only one way. Maybe one day we’ll find a way to to have the cars go both ways without having an annoying camera and without ruining the gameplay.
4. Will be fixed, thanks for pointing it out.
5. Will try and get that fixed in the next version as well. It’s my bad for not testing what happens when the game is suspended.
Thanks again for the feedback, I really appreciate it. Our next update is planned for 18th-20th of March and hopefully all the things you have outlined will be fixed by then :).
Brian – think I replied earlier but if not – yes thats absolutely fine.
Johnny – All sounds good and can’t wait to get the update. Good luck & great work guys!