About Retro Endurance 8bit:

Retro Endurance 8bit is an simple yet fun fast-paced 8-bit style retro based game played through a board game like progression with speed running vibes. It has a collection of retro games, but with a big twist. None of the games are played for more than 10 seconds each. There’s a lot of switching involved, and it’s designed to keep you on your toes. This is all part of the game, and all of the games created are designed around this mechanic.

So a game session works like this:

• The game always starts and ends with a racing game
• The game session will pick a random list of games
• Each game will be played in 3 rounds and for 10 seconds per round.
• When returning back to a game, the game state will be restored, kind of like using automatic save states
• In the last round, the game runs at 2x the speed for pure chaos

After playing a game session, it adds on to your total points. You level up once you reach enough points. Each level brings either a new game or a new boss battle.

When I design the games I build for Retro Endurance, I keep the following rules in mind:

• The game and its mechanics should be learnable after just 1 try of just playing the game.
• Within a 10 second span, you’ll need to be able to progress a meaningful amount
• Use of the direction pad and just one action button (for now) to allow for easy context switching between games
• Work within the NES visual limits as much as possible- keep in mind the sprite specifications, max sprites/line, resolution, rendering limitations (scanline effects, etc.), color limits (4 colors/BG tile, 3 colors/Sprite tile). This is not strictly enforced, but kept in mind to maintain the 8bit vibe. Some 8bit things are completely ignored such as sprite flickering with too many sprites on a scanline.
• Work with NES-sounding audio – all the SFX and music are composed using FamiStudio.

That way, all the games built will feel good with the 10 second mechanic and the games will have that consistency feel playing side by side with each other.

Check out the trailer:

In addition to the gameplay footage: