For more than a decade, Gunnar Kannold has been hosting the BASIC10 Liner Competition

http://basic10liner.com/

The idea is simple, using BASIC on 8-Bit Home Computers from the early days, write a game, utility, or something interesting using up-to 10 Lines of code. There are several categories challenging people to write code with a maximum of 80, 120, 256 characters per line of code.

Final Submission date was 22nd March 2026 and the results are expected to be announced in April once the judging is complete.

This is my second entry to the competition.

This entry was inspired by simple road crossing games, but it’s no frogger…. My first entry was probably intellectual, I decided on something different :-

• Immediate
• Simple
• Tries to kill you in seconds of starting the game.

You got it! A simple arcade game.

Introducing… Pavement Panic

Pavement Panic is a top-down survival game where you navigate four lanes of haunting ghosts, trying to stay alive for as long as possible. The longer you survive, the higher your score… but the faster and more chaotic everything becomes.

It starts gently…. It just doesn’t stay that way.

The Game

You control a small animated character moving between four lanes of traffic… except the traffic is made of ghosts.

• The top two lanes move left
• The bottom two lanes move right
• The middle is where things get dangerous

Crossing between lanes quickly becomes a calculated risk. Early on, the ghosts are predictable. Later… not so much.

Each time a ghost completes a lap of the screen, the difficulty increases. Speeds are re-randomised from an ever-widening range, meaning the game gradually shifts from controlled movement to outright chaos.

Survival time becomes your score.

And just to make things a bit more interesting… the high score updates live while you play, so you always know when you’ve beaten your best.

Play it Yourself

You can play the game on your favourite Amstrad CPC Emulator, Type-It in or run on real hardware, by downloading it the entry here:

https://bunsen.itch.io/pavement-panic-amstrad-cpc-by-muckypaws

I use JavaCPC : https://sourceforge.net/projects/javacpc/ though this will work on real hardware, or other Amstrad CPC Emulators.

Here’s the game in action.

I also asked AI to generate a 1980s style cassette cover the game too… after all cassette artwork was more exciting than many of the games released back then. I know the use of AI is considered Slop by many, though I think this is a pretty good effort maintaining the style of the time period.

Want to see the code? And yes… it really is just 10 lines:

1 MODE 1:BORDER 0:INK 0,0:INK 1,8:INK 2,20:INK 3,26:SYMBOL 255,60,126,255,219,255,255,219,129:h=0:DIM ec(4),er(4),ed(4)

2 s=0:f=0:CLS:FOR r=2 TO 22 STEP 5:PEN 3:LOCATE 1,r:PRINT STRING$(40,"-"):NEXT r:RANDOMIZE(TIME):pc=20:pr=4:b=1.5

3 FOR i=1 TO 4:ec(i)=i*8:er(i)=i*5-1:ed(i)=i*2-5:NEXT i:PEN 1

4 LOCATE 14,24:PRINT"Score:";s;" Hi:";h:FOR i=1 TO 4:LOCATE ec(i),er(i):PRINT" ":ox=ec(i)

5 ec(i)=(ec(i)-1+ed(i)+400) MOD 40+1:IF pr=er(i) AND ABS(ec(i)-ox)<20 AND (pc-ox)*(pc-ec(i))<=0 THEN PEN 1:GOTO 10

6 IF ec(i)=1 OR ec(i)=40 THEN b=b-0.1*(b<6):ed(i)=SGN(ed(i))*(INT(RND*b)+1.5)

7 PEN 2:LOCATE ec(i),er(i):PRINT CHR$(255):NEXT i:s=s+1:h=h-(s-h)*(s>h)

8 LOCATE pc,pr:PRINT" ":k$=INKEY$:pr=pr+(k$="e")*5-(k$="d")*5:pr=((pr-4+20) MOD 20)+4

9 pc=pc+(k$="o")-(k$="p"):pc=(pc+39) MOD 40+1:f=f+1:PEN 3:LOCATE pc,pr:PRINT CHR$(248+(f MOD 4)):PEN 1:GOTO 4

10 LOCATE 10,13:PRINT"GAME OVER Score:";s;"HI:";h:LOCATE 14,15:PRINT"SPACE TO RESTART":WHILE INKEY$<>" ":WEND:GOTO 2

It’s always surprising how much you can squeeze out of these old machines with a bit of creativity… and a lot of stubbornness.

Win or lose, this was a fun one to build… and a reminder that limitations often make things more interesting.

If you want to learn more about the design of the code, all artefacts are available from https://bunsen.itch.io/pavement-panic-amstrad-cpc-by-muckypaws

Let’s see how it does in April.