DONKEY.BAS - Game Play

Game Play

DONKEY.BAS is an extremely simple driving game in which the player controls a car but cannot steer, accelerate or brake, only changing lanes to avoid a series of donkeys on the road. There is no goal other than to avoid donkeys.

The game uses the CGA display mode, the only colour graphics mode available on the original IBM PC. The mode allows four colours but in DONKEY.BAS there are usually only three on screen. The game's low-resolution graphics are very basic.

The center of the screen shows a vertical scrolling road with two lanes; the areas either side of the road are used for scores and instructions. The player's car is driving up the road and every few seconds a donkey will appear at random on one side of the road at the top of the screen. As the donkey moves down the screen the player can press the space bar to switch between lanes to avoid the donkey. If the car hits the donkey, both car and donkey explode, and parts of the graphics are scattered to the four corners of the screen to the sound of a short monophonic tune played through the PC speaker. If the player avoids the donkey, it will scroll off the bottom of the screen, and after a few seconds another will appear. There is never more than one donkey on the screen at any one time.

The game keeps score between the player and the donkeys. If the car hits a donkey, the donkey gets a point and the player is returned to the start of the road. As the car avoids donkeys it moves slowly up the screen, giving the player less time to react when donkeys appear. If the car avoids enough donkeys the player receives a point and the car is moved back to the bottom of the road. The game displays the number of points earned by the player and donkey but does not end or change when a particular score is reached.

Apart from pressing the space bar, the only control available to the player is to press the Esc key and quit the game.

The sprites rendered slightly differently between the QBasic interpreter and the original IBM BASICA/GW-BASIC interpreter.