Offslaught '81 (2026)

This is a tower defence game as if made for a Sinclair ZX-81. A very old underpowered computer from the early 1980s. I wrote it in 2008 as an entry into the TIGSource Retro Demakes competition. That is a modern style game as if it had been made on an older system with limitations. So this is all in black and white, very low res graphics and no sound as was the limitations of the ZX-81 an ultra cheap 8-bit home computer. It was originally written in Python and requires users to download it to run. I have recently converted it to HTML5 to run in browser and added a few retro screen effects.

The ZX-81 achieved its signature visual style by utilizing a character-based grid rather than standard pixel-plotting. The display was organized into a fixed layout of 32 characters wide by 24 rows high, where the system instead relied on a specific internal set of "block graphics". These pre-defined characters represented various combinations of quarters and halves of a character cell plus a single checkerboard grey square, and by carefully arranging these shapes side-by-side, developers could create the illusion of lines, solid forms, and simple sprites to turn a text-based display into a functional, low-resolution screen. I have replicated this using the same tileset, so in places graphics may look as though they clash with what is behind them but this is the limitation of tileset. The speed is not authentic though. People used incredible tricks to force the most out of this tiny system but this game ignores the speed limitations.

Pressing "#" opens up the secret retro vfx option window.