Lode Runner Remake for Roku

A remake of the classic 1980s video game

Channel Description: This is a remake of one of the 1980s video game classics, Lode Runner, originally published by Broderbund. The game requires you to have an enhanced game remote for your Roku, and you can choose whether to play with the remote in vertical or horizontal mode. You can choose which version you want to play from any of five platforms: Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Atari 8 bits or Sinclair ZX Spectrum. There are also three versions of the game to choose from: Classic (1983 with 150 levels), Championship (1984 with 50 fan-created levels) and Professional (1985 with 150 new levels), or a custom levels mode. Select your control mode offers a diagram of what each button on your Roku remote controls. You can also select one of five game speeds, from very slow to very fast.

The following gameplay basics are provided by Wikipedia:

The player controls a stick figure who must collect all the gold in a level while avoiding guards who try to catch the player. After collecting all the gold, the player must touch the top of the screen to reach the next level. There are 150 levels in the game which progressively challenge players' problem-solving abilities or reaction times.

Levels feature a multi-story, brick platform motif, with ladders and suspended hand-to-hand bars that offer multiple ways to travel throughout. The player can dig holes into floors to temporarily trap guards and may safely walk atop trapped guards. Should a guard be carrying a bar of gold when he falls into a hole it will be left behind, and can be retrieved by the player. Over time, floors dug into will regenerate, filling in these holes. A trapped guard who cannot escape a hole before it fills is consumed, immediately respawning in a random location at the top of the level. Unlike guards, the player's character may not climb up out of a hole, and will be killed if it fills before he can escape by other means. Floors may also contain trapdoors, through which the player and guards will fall, and bedrock, through which the player cannot dig.

Notably, the player can only dig a hole to the sides, and not directly underneath himself. This introduces an important strategy for when digging a hole x blocks deep, the player must first dig a gap at least x wide to be able to dig through it, as the number of spaces will shrink with each layer, and the player needs at least one free adjacent space to be able to dig. However, exceptions to this rule arise when the player digs from the position of standing on a ladder, or hanging from a hand-to-hand bar, which allows the player to repeatedly dig and descend one row. This kind of digging is involved in solving many of the levels.

The player starts with five lives; each level completion awards an extra life. Should a guard catch the player, one life is subtracted, and the current level restarts. The player's character can fall from arbitrary heights without any injury but cannot jump, and players can trap themselves in pits from which the only escape is to abort the level, costing a life, and begin again.

A YouTube video from the channel/game developer illustrating all of the nuances of the game can be viewed below, and screenshots are available at the bottom of the page.