Okay.  This may not be the best game to post on here first because this one needs some explanation as to its origins. 

So currently for my job I teach computer science.  This quarter I'm teaching an intro to object oriented programming class.  For that class I give programming exams (where the students have to write some code that uses the stuff we've been talking about).  For the past few quarters I've been letting the students in the class choose the theme for the exam.  They don't get to pick what they actually get tested on of course, but I put in different themes to make the exam a little more interesting.  Some common themes include Zelda, Mario, Warcraft (most Blizzard games actually), Megaman, etc.  When I first started doing this the programs weren't really games exactly.  They would just print out stuff like, "Link hits the Armos doing 23 points of damage.  The Armos now has 87 hit points".  However, one time the students requested Donkey Kong for their theme.  I thought, "How cool would it be for them to actually create a Donkey Kong game?"  Since this is just an introductory class we do mostly console applications.  We don't really get into graphical applications much.  So I got the idea of creating an ASCII version of Donkey Kong.  I thought it would be much less intimidating for the students than a graphical game, plus I'd never really created a console game that wasn't just text-based.  And that's how Donkey Kong ASCII was born (I'm planning to post it on here after I spiffy it up a bit with some more levels.  It currently only has two and only plays one of them at a time.)

Alright.  Now you know how I got on this whole ASCII game thing.  Now to explain the existence of Guantlet ASCII - Survival Edition.  This game started out as plain old Guantlet ASCII.  One of my students suggested Guantlet as an exam theme, so I thought I'd try it out.  I wanted to have more than one level (a staple in the original Guantlet) so I created a random level generator.  That worked out well.  Then I started getting the enemy and enemy generators going.  While testing that I'd run over to one side of the map and hide.  I just wanted to make sure the enemies were being spawned correctly and were moving correctly.  I already had the health decrease and food features implemented, so while watching the enemies spawn and move I'd dart out every once in a while to grab some food.  I found that it was actually kind of fun to hide out and avoid the enemies.  So I decided to make that into my game instead of following the actual Guantlet games more faithfully.  Whew!  So now you know where Guantlet ASCII - Survival Edition came from.

For this game you'll need to have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed on your computer.  As long as you have that and remotely recent hardware you should be fine in running the game.  For some other games I may make an installer that will install the .NET Framework if you don't already have it, but for this humble little game I thought that might be overkill.  The idea behind the game is that you just have to stay alive until the timer runs out.  Your health slowly decreases.  If one of the baddies gets you then your health runs out very fast.  You can pick up food (yellow @ symbols) to boost your health back up a bit.  You move using the arrow keys and shoot using the space bar.  P will pause or unpause the game.  Other than that, let me know what you think of the game: too easy, too hard, stupid and pointless, the best thing you've ever seen, etc.

Download Gauntlet ASCII - Survival Edition

P.S.  This game is not a joint venture with Rebecca.  So if this game really sucks it's all my fault.  Don't blame her for it.