Scorched Tanks is an artillery style game released for the Amiga platform in 1994. The game is inspired by the MS-DOS game Scorched Earth (1991).[1]
Between two and four human and computer-controlled opponents each control one stationary tank in a two-dimensional playfield of randomly generated mountainous terrain. The aim of the game is to destroy the other tanks by shooting, utilizing indirect fire.
The game has 70 weapons and 13 types of shield, ranging from simple to the elaborate. Players purchase equipment before each round, and bonus cash is awarded for dealing damage to opponents.
Weapons include the Liquid Nitrogen, which fills like a liquid and deals damage to tanks before it evaporates, Crimson Flood, which triggers a series of explosions that cover terrain and deals damage to tanks in the path of the explosions, Crazy 8s, which bounces unpredictably around the target, Mega Nuke, which obliterates any tanks in its blast radius, and the Grab Bag, which fires either a random weapon worth more than $4,000 or a 'blank'. Many weapons specifically destroy, create, move or ignore terrain.
Shields include the inexpensive Absorb, which absorbs damage, the Magnetic shield which deflects incoming warheads (at three different levels, from a gentle nudge to seriously altering the inbound trajectory), the X-tinguisher which absorbs most weapons that make a direct hit and puts them into the target's own inventory, the Detonator, which triggers dangerous weapons safely out of range, and Feedback, which reflects incoming direct hits directly back where they came from.
Scorched Tanks was developed by Dark Unicorn Productions. Dark Unicorn's membership also included Seumas McNally, after whom the Independent Games Festival's Seumas McNally Grand Prize is named. Scorched Tanks was written with AMOS Professional.