Gameplay

The player controls a man trapped in a hedgerow maze with no exits and many threats, some natural such as bats and spiders, others artificial in nature and much more deadly. The player starts out in a bunker

Bunker

A military bunker is a hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks...

 in the middle of the map equipped with a handgun

Handgun

A handgun is a firearm designed to be held and operated by one hand. This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from long guns such as rifles and shotguns ....

 loaded with six bullets. When the character needs to reload, a gun icon flashes at 1 of 5 random locations and he will be forced to traverse the maze defenseless until a fresh weapon can be obtained.

There are five different robot

Robot

A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...

s that you go through in accordance with your point total. The terrain is filled with corners and ambush points that players must use to full effect. There is also a spider web in the northwest corner where the Spider enemy spawns. Player movement is severely hindered here, and all firepower is heavily suppressed within, making it a strategic location. Also of importance is the player's bunker, in which the player begins each life. The bunker is a safe zone and the player is impervious to damage while inside, though the more advanced robot adversaries have the firepower to destroy your safe haven.

The game features only one unchanging level and no music, instead having a pulsing background beat playing back at a set interval that signals the speed chosen by the player.

The Robots

The Robots are the main antagonists of the game. There are five different robots, each one increasingly more difficult to destroy and avoid.

Grey Robot
The first robot enemy you face, the Grey Robot lacks in intelligence and durability, requiring only one shot to destroy. It makes very little effort to track the player. It will fire at the player if it sees him in plain sight, but spends most of its time wandering the maze and firing randomly. Destroying a Grey Robot is worth 300 points. After the player reaches 5,000 points and either of the two Bats are destroyed, they will be replaced by Grey Robots for the remainder of the game.

Blue Robot
Appears after the player reaches 5,000 points. The Blue Robot is smarter than the Grey Robot, and makes a determined effort to track the player through the maze, though this behavior makes it vulnerable to ambush as it is no more durable than the Grey Robot. Blue Robots are worth 500 points per kill, and will be supplemented by Grey Robots as the Bats fall.

White Robot
Appears after the player reaches 15,000 points. The White Robot behaves almost identically to the Blue Robot, but is considerably more threatening due to its shield. The player must score three hits on the White Robot in order to destroy it, forcing the player to quickly adopt new strategies and secure replacement ammunition. The player receives 1,000 points for felling a White Robot.

Black Robot
There are actually two versions of the Black Robot. The first appears when the player reaches 30,000 points. It has all of the behavior characteristics and shielding of the White Robot, with the added advantage of firing a new type of bullet. This bullet is larger than the standard, and has the ability to absorb player fire, making direct assaults all but useless. Upon reaching 50,000 points, the Black Robot's firepower becomes even stronger, and it can destroy the player's bunker. Both versions of the Black Robot are worth 2,000 points per kill.

Invisible Robot
The last and most difficult adversary, the Invisible Robot appears at 80,000 points. In addition to having all of the Black Robot's powers and advanced weaponry, the Invisible Robot sports a cloaking device

Cloaking device

Cloaking devices are advanced stealth technologies still in development that will cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic spectrum...

 that renders it completely impossible to see. The only method of pinning the robot's location is by drawing its fire and noting the point of origin, no small task. Destroying an Invisible Robot nets the player 4,000 points. They will continue to appear for the remainder of the game.

Other enemies

Bat
The game begins with a pair of Bats lurking the maze, both roosting at various points. They fly around the maze in a random pattern. They will temporarily paralyze the player upon contact, and have a tendency to make several attacks at once to keep the player stuck in place long enough for a robot to have an easy shot. Once the Blue Robot appears and a Bat is destroyed either by player or robot fire, the bat is replaced by a Grey Robot drone and does not appear again in the game. Bats are worth 300 points if killed by the player. No points are awarded if a bat is killed by a robot.

Spider
The Spider spawns in the spider web in the northwest corner of the maze. Its behavior is identical to that of the Bat in that it moves at random and causes paralysis to the player. The Spider, however, will appear throughout the entire game, and is worth only 100 points per kill. It tends to favor the spider web as a haunt, as its movement is unhindered here and therefore poses a greater threat to the player in this area.

Ports

Night Stalker was also released on the Atari 2600

Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...

 under the name Dark Cavern. In order to compensate for lower-resolution graphics, Dark Cavern featured faster game play and the ability to carry more bullets. While it still had robots and spiders, the bats were replaced with blobs, which would take away your bullets if it attacked. The game was later ported to the Apple II

Apple II

The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...

 in 1983.

The Intellivision

Intellivision

The Intellivision is a video game console released by Mattel in 1979. Development of the console began in 1978, less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. The word intellivision is a portmanteau of "intelligent television"...

 version of Night Stalker was made available on Microsoft's

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Game Room

Game Room

Game Room is a gaming service for the Xbox 360 video game system, Microsoft Windows PCs, and Windows Phone 7. Launched on March 24, 2010, Game Room lets players download classic video games and compete against each other for high scores...

service for its Xbox 360

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...

 console and for Windows-based

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

s in May 2010.

External links

• Blue Sky - Night Stalker