Extrial

As a kid I was a huge fan of games like Fort Apocalypse and Choplifter, and they definitely influenced Extrial when I started making it for the Amiga.

The game itself grew out of a 2D engine I started developing when I was around 15 years old. At the time I was part of an Amiga demo group, where I learned a lot about programming directly in machine code and working with the Amiga’s custom hardware. That eventually led to my own blitter/copper-based 2D engine, which became the foundation for Extrial.

I still have the original source code and assets, and over the last few years I’ve been coming back to the project on and off. Recently I decided to take it more seriously again and started porting the game to modern systems.

The main goal is to get Extrial running on as many platforms as possible. PC and Mac are obvious targets, but I’d also like to see how far I can take it on other platforms, including mobile if I can get the controls to feel right.

For now, the focus is on getting the original game ported properly and preserving how it originally worked. Once that is finished, I may start improving the game itself as well.

Back in the day, Extrial was generally seen as a good-looking and fun game, but it was also considered pretty difficult. So that may be one of the things I revisit later—without losing what made the original game what it was.

What I really like about this project is that something I created roughly 35 to 40 years ago is now slowly being brought back to life on completely different hardware.

There’s nothing to download just yet, but I’ll keep posting updates as the port progresses and Extrial is gradually reborn.