Roundabout Solitaire (C64)

I had a hangover from Friday night and was looking for something to do to pass Saturday afternoon that wasn't as taxing as working on Galaga or Robotron....some might say that shouldn't involve making C64 games at all but hey....

I noticed that the Kenney Jam was happening this weekend, where the theme was 'Rotation' and the main rule is you can only use Kenney's assets for graphics. I found a set of '1-bit' 16x16 tiles that were easy to import into Charpad, and among those were some playing cards.

The game was written using in 6502 assembly using KickAssembler, Sublime Text and Charpad and is playable in the browser thanks to lvllvl.com/c64, as well as on real hardware or an emulator.

How To Play

The aim is to put all the cards back in order, from A-K, in their correct rows. 

• The order of the rows is HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES.
• You have five minutes per level.
• Move the crosshair using joystick/arrows keys.
• Press fire (Z) to rotate the surrounding cards clockwise. 
• When all cards are back in order, the level is complete and a bonus is awarded.
• If the time runs out, you still move to the next level but with no bonus.
• On each level the number of scrambled cards increases.
• The game pauses at level 10 for you to decide whether to move on with your life or continue to even harder levels. 

Scoring

• Complete level - 500
• For each minute remaining - 100
• For each second remaining - 1
• For each match made above the starting position - 50

What the ????

Yes, this game can get pretty hard past the first few levels, especially when a card ends up several rows or columns away from its home position. I'm sure there are some clever sequences for manipulating cards back into the right order in given situations but in my hungover state it made my brain hurt.