Alive 15 Game Reviews.

"Chainz" - by Paradize Software

Here is a rarity in this day and age, namely a game made specifically for the base Falcon '030, which leads to a tingle of anticipation not felt since the glory days of the Reservoir Gods.

The anticipation is not dampened when we learn this new game comes from Paradize Software, the home of numerous Simon Sunnyboy created light and pleasant GFA coded games. 'ChainZ' was actually made by the French arm of Paradize, namely Cooper with a borrowed Falcon '030 from Guido, thanks for that mate, whoever you are...

Apart from the uncommonness of getting brand new stuff made specifically for the Falcy these days, a greater breakthrough has been accomplished as Cooper goes one better with a confident dabble with the not commonly used for games VGA 640 x 480 mode, using 256 colours. I've wracked my brain and can't really come up with any other games that do that, not one?

Needless to say, what we are about to receive is going to be along the lines of a gentle low impact puzzler, and indeed that proves to be the case. ChainZ is based on a game called 'Chain Reaction' found on the Clickmazes website. The gameplay is simple, you are presented with a grid of blocks and triangles, your start position is indicated by a white dot, and you can travel horizontally or vertically, jumping across tiles if necessary, but the tile you land on has got to match either the colour or shape. If you run out of places to go before you've cleared the screen, then you have to reset the level and start again.

There are up to 22 levels to clear, there is no scoring system, no life limit or timer, or any (known) cheat mode to clear the screen, just you, a reset option for the level if you get stuck, and F10 if you decide you have had enough. Like I said, it's a nice gently-paced game which is good to soak up the odd half-hour or so.

There is more variety later on, as the initial two tile types and two colours gain an extra colour. At time of writing I haven't completed all of the levels, so can't really comment if there are any further enhancements in the later stages. The difficulty level has been described as easy by the creators, so I doubt there are any really nasty gameplay-affecting surprises there.

ChainZ is a considerably more glamourous and graphically enhanced younger sister of the original Chain Reaction game. The graphics are described as 'borrowed', but they are borrowed to good effect. There is original music by James which sounds cool. There is even a useful Hatari friendly mode, which caters for the soundless partial Falcon 030 emulation made possible, as you can press the spacebar right after the program is launched, to give a silent but otherwise perfectly functioning game in that emulator.

ChainZ is a neat and undemanding release, but at the same time, really does look the part on the Falcon. Best of all, it looks like Cooper is going to give us some more Falcy releases, maybe we could ask the impossible and see if he comes up with something more dynamic and arcade-based using the Falcon VGA mode next time?!

Ratings..

Graphics:- 80% - Slight marking down for borrowing, but overall nicess of subject matter and use of uncommonly used higher res VGA mode on the Falcon.

Playability:- 85% - Simple to learn, nice time passer.

Overall:- 82% - Loud applause for getting any gameplay out of the Falcon VGA mode!

Yoomp!

Trailblazer in a 3-D tube by Taquart!

This little review sneaks in, courtesy of the fact that it is made on an Atari, and we've been pretty liberal when it comes to reporting a little bit more about the 8-bit machines lately, and secondly, it comes from the extremely talented makers of the 'Numen' demo, Taquart.

The creator credits included Marcin ?ukowski, ?ukasz Sychowicz, Piotr Fusik and Bartek Wsiel. Yoomp! was intended originally as a port of an old DOS PeeCee game 'Tube', but that idea ran aground on the memory requirements for the graphics resolution. So thoughts turned next to making a 3-D tunnely version of an existing 2-D overhead viewed game called 'Jump'. Work started in May of 2007, and progressed quickly to the point where it entered and won the ABBUC game competition, and was thereafter ready for release in October of that year, to the general acclaim of all pouetians. Not least as it seems to have used a common, even cliched demo effect, and put it to the service of some pretty effective gameplaying.

A sticky spirally end?

We start with a smart and well-drawn title screen, which is indicative of the high quality that normally shows up in Taquart releases, this is encouraging to see and quickens anticipation that the same high standard will be maintained for the game itself. Some very nice POKEY music starts, the soundtrack quality matching the graphics. Additionally, we are told that there is stereo POKEY support, for those people with such hardware. The game uses a pseudo-stereo effect for music, and the sound effects use a left-right panning effect. We are informed that on-the-fly adjustments of music or sound effects volume is included in the game if you need it.

The game is set within a rolling forward three-dimensional textured tube, framed by some suitably in-keeping with the game aesthetic background graphics. The game is gently paced, enough to give you confidence in playing and learning the levels, so not making it impossibly quick. The ball bounces gently along, left and right are steerable by joystick, or emulated versions thereof. And the fire button provides the extra bounce needed to get across the level gaps. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of falling down the gaps, dying, and starting again.

On the other hand, there is a progress bar running along the bottom of the screen to show how far you've got down the tunnel, and if you get far enough, (more than halfway at a guess where the level textures change), then the game will considerately restart you from that midway position, rather than throwing you right back to the start of the level.

I got only as far as level 2 in my initial efforts with the game. And yes, it does have that sneaking 'one more go' factor. We are informed by the authors that there are lots of ingame items such as additional lives, extra jumps, earthquakes, lightning, (which I did see) and teleporters (which I saw in a video demonstrator of the different levels.)

There are 21 levels altogether, with an increasing difficulty level, but they are accessible with level codes (hooray!) We are informed from the website that it could take over 20 minutes for a full start to finish run-through of the game, assuming you don't get killed on the way of course.

There are a few more technical details of interest. The game works on a standard 64 KB Atari thanks to efficient compression routines, we are also informed that the real memory footprint is over 80 KB. So you don't need those mega memory extensions to play it. Also that the game engine works in a 128x96 pixels resolution (Graphics 7, ANTIC mode 14) in 2 frames.

The latest versions of the game, both as an .atr disk image, and the individual .xex executable files, and quite a bit of information about it, are available from the website at http://yoomp.atari.pl/ From there, there is even an option to purchase a physical copy of the game, with a real box and manual etc, although that seems to have been on a limited availability basis and now has completely sold out.

To conclude, Yoomp! is a neat and original twist on an old but playable game type (Trailblazer), but given the demoscene extra high quality production process to create something very special.

Ratings..

Graphics:- 90% - Very high quality for the platform and in keeping with the game, lots of texture variations.

Sound:- 85% - Nice 'rolling' mellow tune complemented by 'bouncy' sound effects ingame.

Playability:- 95% - Very carefully graduated difficulty level, lots of considerate little touches like the progress bar.

Overall:- 90% - A superior 'little' game.

CiH, for Alive Mag 2008

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