Let's explain where the idea for this game came from.

I was the younger brother—specifically, 10 years younger. When I was very little, the ZX Spectrum was that thing my brother knew how to program on, and I would just watch what he did. As I got older, I would ask him to let me use it, and we had spectacular fights over it (I even broke a ZX Spectrum+). But I always wanted to do those things, even if it was just drawing a circle or making a text adventure. As I grew up, I played games like Target Renegade with my brother, which allowed for two-player gameplay.

As soon as I could, I learned BASIC. At my school, we were taught LOGO in the early years of primary school. Having a Spectrum at home, it was impressive to see those 'Domenec' machines with an 8086 processor and a 'TURBO' button.

My school was a HUGE place where I spent 13 years. It was a place where there was the violence of the old Spanish EGB system (yes, I said violence—I even learned Judo there due to the 80s and 90s ninja craze), but also nostalgia. With its computer lab, typing classes, electronics class with transformers, and science labs... I think it exposed me to many things that helped me decide my career path. The school had a swimming pool, just like in the game, an alleycat, just like in the game, and the computer labs and science labs were in the basement, just like in the game.

The school's PCs had AlleyCat installed, and that game always seemed quite special to me because it was so different from the rest—so wild. I still haven't seen another game with that same crazy arcade feel. Combine those two things, and that led me to implement AlleyCat on the ZX Spectrum, which I called Misifu. Then, Jarlaxe—the artist behind amazing games like Toki Mal and Black or White—helped me refine it a lot, and I released Misifu Remeow, a much better game than the first, though essentially the same game.

When the contest was announced, I was already considering porting Target: Renegade to the Sega Mega Drive, a console I never had but would have loved to own since I played it a lot with my cousin or friends. So I already had some mechanics in mind. When the topic of a high school setting came up, I thought it fit well with games like River City, and I could start thinking about rooms.

At first, I thought about using AI to generate them, and I even created some things that looked nice, but they lacked coherence and didn't allow me to properly design a game map.

So I went back to an old favorite: TILED. With it, I reused the tiles I had planned for my Mega Drive project and expanded them, first in 16-bit colors.

I spent a lot of time trying to use the 256-color mode in GIMP, but with little success—it either broke transparency or messed up the palette.

Until I discovered ASEPRITE, thanks to the developer of No Cash. That allowed me to convert my game to 320x240 resolution with 256 colors—the ultimate tool, in my opinion, for making sprites and tiles for retro games.

It has been a game full of highs and lows—impossible crashes I couldn't find, trying to make everything super editable but ending up hardcoding some things—but I had an amazing time making it and really enjoyed talking with other developers.