Ghost Saga is a mini game (and possibly just the first episode of a larger game) that has both arcade and adventure style elements. The player uses the right joystick to control their character (who can walk left or right as well as crouch), and the button does a variety of things depending on what situation the player is in at the time (examples include things like swing their battle axe, open a door, talk to a character, etc.). For the most part the game runs on a graphics screen of which there are 3 screens in all; occasionally when interacting with characters or objects it switches to the text screen to give the player information (see the above level 1 screen shot on the right). The main goal of the game is to raise the flag at the end of screen 3, but the adventure part of the game is to find objects and solutions to situations, which sometimes requires going back and forth between screens.
Ghost Saga was born on the YouTube channel TRS-80 Retro Programing, where he has been doing "discovery tutorials" (where he learns as he goes and shares he journey with his viewers) on Extended BASIC programming for the Coco 1 and 2 specifically. Ghost Saga is based on a few conversations with YouTube commenters, including some double-buffering tricks for smoother animation and some cool effects he came up with on his own (the animation of the Coco Power Software with a spotlight while playing a theme song is one in particular). He has been doing multiple other gaming projects that are in various stages of completion, and any game related ones he completes will be added to this site as well.
Title: Ghost Saga
Author: TRS-80 Retro Programing
Publisher: Coco Power Software
Released: December 19, 2024
Requires: Color Computer 1,2,3 with 32K RAM; joystick.