Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons

Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons

Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons is a three-part episodic side-scrolling platform video game developed by Ideas from the Deep and published by Apogee Software in 1990. It is the first set of episodes of the Commander Keen series. The game follows the titular Commander Keen, an eight-year-old child genius, as he retrieves the stolen parts of his spaceship from the cities of Mars. The three episodes feature Keen running, jumping, and shooting through various levels while opposed by aliens, robots, and other hazards.

About Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons in brief

Summary Commander Keen in Invasion of the VorticonsCommander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons is a three-part episodic side-scrolling platform video game developed by Ideas from the Deep and published by Apogee Software in 1990 for MS-DOS. It is the first set of episodes of the Commander Keen series. The game follows the titular Commander Keen, an eight-year-old child genius, as he retrieves the stolen parts of his spaceship from the cities of Mars. The three episodes feature Keen running, jumping, and shooting through various levels while opposed by aliens, robots, and other hazards. The trilogy was lauded by reviewers due to the graphical achievement and humorous style, and id Software went on to develop other successful games, including Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. The games have been released as part of several collections by id andApogee since its first release, and has been sold for modern computers through Steam since 2007. After the first episode, most of the most lost enemies lose a life, and the game is ended if all of Keen’s lives are lost. Some enemies can also be stunned if they are jumped on, such as the one-eyed one-eyeed Yorkhoon. There are also rare instances in which Keen is broken into into three episodes, which gives him temporary invulnerability. The player cannot save and return to the middle of a level. In between levels, Keen travels on a two-dimensional map, viewed from above. From the map the player can enter levels by moving Keen to the entrance or save their progress in the game. Some levels are optional and can be bypassed, while others are secret and can only be reached by following specific procedures.

Each of the three episodes contain a different set of enemies in their levels, which Keen must kill or avoid. The first episode includes Martians, the second largely uses robots,. and the third more species of aliens. The third episode also includes Vorticon, large blue canine-like aliens, which can also include hazards like electricity or spikes. After finding a lost episode, Keen can find food items throughout the levels which grant an extra 20,000 points, with an extra life awarded every time. In the third episode, he can also bounce continuously and jump higher than he can normally with the correct timing. The second episode introduces moving platforms as well as switches that extend bridges over gaps in the floor, and Keen can shoot at different enemies using ammunition found throughout the game to kill or in some cases are immune to some cases; some enemies also take different numbers of shots to kill, or are immune in other cases. The fourth episode gives Keen access to an extra key card that grants him access to parts of the third episodes, and in rare occasions he can take part in rare episodes that grant access to locked parts of levels, and on rare occasions, Keen also takes part in an episode that gives temporary invulnerable invulnerability, which is also broken. The first royalty check convinced the development team to quit their jobs at Softdisk. The team founded id Software shortly thereafter and go on to produce another four episodes over the next year.