The Pendulum Paradox is Jazz Jackrabbit inspired platformer game for Android. It also utilizes multiplayer for 2 players via Google Play Game Service.
The Android Andrea Falk travel through time when suddenly her time machine starts falling apart (because of improperly tightened screws of course) and then breaks which makes him stuck in the 16th century. The only way how to get back to the future is to gather the missing parts and repair the time machine. However, the world in 16th century is not a safe place. There are tons of hostile beings that try to ruin Andrea's plan. She needs to utilize all of his skills and effort in order to survive. There are also some rummors that Andrea's friend hologram Rune crashed nearby as well. Maybe they can join forces and help each other to succeed.
The game is fairly straightforward. The basic goal is to stay alive as long as possible and get as high score as possible. One game round runs as long as all involved players are alive. Each player has three lives but also health attribute which means one hit from an enemy might or might not lead to one life subtraction (depends on the enemy strength). Moreover, there are also defense and damage attributes that define player’s resistance against attacks and damage applied to enemies. Players attempt to kill enemies by shooting at them.
In the Android version of the game, player is controlled by UI buttons. The left part of the screen contains buttons for moving left and right and the right part has buttons for shooting and jumping. The desktop version uses arrow keys for movement and jumping and space key for shooting.
The game contains two medieval levels. The goal is always to reach the end of the current level. When all players finish the last level the game starts again with the first level (endless level loop).
Players get points for killing enemies (5 points) and collecting time machine parts (10 or 20 points). Scores of individual players are counted separately. The more points the better. After finishing one game round, scores are sent to online High score ladder managed by Google Play Game services.
The game has two different coin types. One is worth 10 points (copper wheel) and the second one 20 points (gold wheel).
In the levels you can also find three different kinds of enhancements:
- Life enhancement (red) - permanently adds one extra life to the player who has collected it.
- Defense enhancement (green) - increases defense of all players for a short period of time (15 s)
- Damage enhancement (blue) - increases damage of all players for a short period of time (15 s)
The game contains three different kinds of enemies:
- Smeets the Knight - aggressive guy constantly trying to kill someone with his well-forged sword. There are rummors that he came from Netherlands.
- Tore the Ninja Boy - impatient being constantly jumping around and trying avoid work. He was born in Japan but he is not welcomed there anymore.
- Henning the Ninja - a close friend of Tore. His hearing is not one of the best and that is why it is so hard to get in touch with him. You can often find him just running around in panic.
Written by Matthew (aka Master Builder)