Dave Gnukem

About the game

Dave Gnukem is a scrolling platform shooter in the style of the early 1990s PC games: a 320 by 200 screen, blocky scrolling, chunky sprites and a frame rate deliberately held at 18 frames per second. It was written by David Joffe, who started the first version in assembly language on an old 286 and kept coming back to it for more than twenty years, with levels and sprites from other contributors, so the author likes to say it took forever to finish.

The story is a joke. In the near future an evil genius has been hired to infect the world's computers with a virus called SystemD, and the only cure is an antivirus disk hidden somewhere in the levels. You play Dave, an overweight hero with a blaster, who has to find the disk and install it on the main computer. Along the way there are robots, flying machines, rolling cannons, jumping monsters, electric barriers, lifts, teleporters and a few penguins that turned evil because of the virus.

Each level is a maze of rooms to explore. You look for the exit, pick up keys of different colours and use them on the locks next to coloured doors, collect points and health, grab power boots to jump higher and a special molecule that restores your health, and shoot what gets in your way. Some barriers need several hits to break, and touching them kills you at once.

The game has no connection to any other game and uses only its own sprites, levels and sounds.

Playing it here

The download is about 7 MB. Choose Start GNU game in the main menu and the first level begins. The menu also lets you restore a saved game, select another mission, read the instructions, redefine the keys and change the retro settings, which simulate the 16-colour EGA and 4-colour CGA looks. Your settings, saved games and high scores stay in this browser.

This version has no music. The original game ships a set of background tracks by another composer, whose terms of use are not in the game's repository, so we left them out. The sound effects are all there, and the sound of reaching the exit is a new one made for this site, since the original was one of those tracks.

Controls

The keys for moving, jumping, shooting and using things can be changed under Redefine keys in the main menu. Jump and shoot are Z and X here because Ctrl and Alt, the keys the desktop game uses, clash with browser and system shortcuts.

Tips

Shoot before you step. Most robots die to a few hits, and barriers break after several. Clear the way first, then move.

Jump from the edge. Walk right up to the edge of a platform and jump from there, instead of jumping early and hoping to reach the other side.

Match keys and doors. Keys are coloured, and each works on the lock of the same colour. Pick up every key you see, since a door may be several rooms away.

Save often. The in-game menu has a save command, and a restore command in the main menu brings you back after a bad fall.

FAQ

Why does the game feel slow? It is meant to. The frame rate is fixed at 18 frames per second, like the 1990s games it looks back on.

Is the level editor there? The game has one built in, behind debug keys described in its README, but it is not part of how this version is meant to be played.

Credits

Dave Gnukem was written by David Joffe, with sprites and levels by Evil Mr Henry, Steve Merrifield, T.O.G. and others, and the SDL2 port by Matteo Bini. The source code and most of the data are available under the MIT licence or the GPL; this site uses the MIT licence. A few pieces have their own terms, and the ones that ask for credit are these:

• The boots sprite is by freepik.com, from flaticon.com (CC BY 3.0).
• The bitmap font simple_6x8 is by zingot.com, from opengameart.org (CC BY 3.0).
• The key pick-up sound is by Vinrax, from opengameart.org (CC BY 3.0).
• The shooting sound is a slightly modified version of a gunshot by Michel Baradari, apollo-music.de, from opengameart.org (CC BY 3.0).

The Pixel Operator fonts and a few sounds by Juhani Junkala are public domain (CC0). The full licence texts are in the game's licence file.