DROP64

Fall. Shoot. Stomp. Don't stop.

DROP64 is a brand-new game for the Commodore 64, written from scratch in 6502 assembly. You drop down a deep shaft with gunboots strapped to your feet: fire jumps you off the ground, and in the air it shoots straight down, slowing your fall. Stomp on monsters, blast through blocks, chain kills without landing and collect the gems they leave behind, all the way down to the Warden waiting at the bottom of the sixth depth.

Features

• Six depths, each with its own look and music: the cave, ice, moss, crystal, magma and the abyss. Each run strings the depth's level pieces together in a new order, so no two drops are the same.
• The Warden: a giant boss waiting at the bottom of the abyss.
• Deeper descents: beat the Warden and the drop goes on. Descent 2 is darker, its monsters tougher, and every gem counts double, and so on as far down as you can survive.
• High scores, saved to disk: the five best runs with your initials, arcade style, kept on the game disk between sessions.
• Unlockable starts: reach depth 4 to start a run with a gun module; beat the Warden to start straight on descent 2.
• Six kinds of monster: walkers, bats that dive at you, spikers you must not land on, floaters, armoured beetles you can only stomp, and hoppers.
• Gunboots and gun modules: wide shot, laser (shots go through monsters), burst shot and the short-range puncher.
• Combos: chain kills in mid-air for milestone rewards, streak bonuses and the gem high (wide, harder shots for a few seconds).
• Upgrades and a gem shop between depths: more HP, more ammo, a higher stomp bounce, healing.
• Original SID soundtrack: a song for every depth and screen, in the spirit of Chris Hülsbeck's Turrican tunes.
• Pushing the C64: open top and bottom borders with a sprite HUD, a sprite multiplexer, two-layer parallax, raster effects, flying debris, screen shake, FLD transitions, and a full-screen loading picture.
• A fast loader: on a 1541 the game loads in about 40 seconds (other drives and SD2IEC use the normal loader).

Controls

Joystick in port 2 (port 1 works too):

• Left / right: walk and steer as you fall.
• Fire on the ground: jump.
• Fire in the air: shoot downwards (each shot slows your fall; hold to keep firing). Ammo refills when you land or stomp.
• Land on monsters to stomp them. Spikers hurt from above: shoot those.
• Space pauses. M on the title screen turns the music off or on.

How to play

Download the .d64 disk image and load it on a PAL Commodore 64 with a 1541 (or compatible) drive:

LOAD"*",8,1
RUN

or open it in an emulator such as VICE (File → Smart attach / Autostart).

Requirements: a PAL Commodore 64 (or C64C), a disk drive or SD2IEC, a joystick. The game is PAL only.

Free demo: the first two depths. The full game has all six depths and the Warden.

In the download: the .d64 disk image, a README, and an illustrated 9-page PDF instruction manual.

Made with Claude Opus 5.5

DROP64 was produced by Claude Opus 5.5, Anthropic's AI model, working in Claude Code. I gave the direction, played every build and reported what looked, sounded or felt wrong; Claude wrote all the code, the music, the graphics and the tools: the game in 6502 assembly, the level and music generators, the loading picture, the fast loader, and the tests that run every build in the VICE emulator.

Credits

• Design and direction: K. Patronas
• Code, graphics, music and sound: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic)
• Decruncher: Exomizer by Magnus Lind
• Tested in VICE, the Versatile Commodore Emulator

© 2026 K. Patronas