Freddy Pharkas

Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist

I first played this game when I was a youngling at my Uncle’s house and I remember being so excited when I booted it up and watched the witty Ballad of Freddy Pharkas play out.

The concept was original and captivating—an ex-gunslinger hangs up his sidearms to go out West and become a pharmacist before events draw him back in to his gun-toting ways—all set in a gorgeous cartoon Wild West setting.

I quickly filled the first two prescriptions that acted as the copy protection to the game, then enthusiastically took Freddy outside to explore where I promptly walked into a swamp and died.

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Useful Adventure Game Resources: Puzzle Documents

Since I started my series about handling movement, I’ve learned a lot more about Entity Component Systems and I’m changing the way my engine is structured to reflect this.

While this sounds like a Typical Simon Rabbit Hole, it has fundamentally changed how I approach game engine development and I have made some huge strides with very minimal effort. Thanks to the advantages of ECS, some features that I thought would have to wait for many versions down the line have become trivially easy to implement.

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