'Yopaz IceStar'

by Orion

After a busy period, including a new CT60 demo at the Sillyventure Party in 2014, a new platform game 'Alice's Mom's Rescue' on the Jaguar, we get some goodness coming our way from Orionsoft for a stock Atari ST and above.

The scenario is that you are playing 'Yopaz', the little smiley guy in the screenshot and you must collect all the stars in the universe. The 'universe' for this case is a lot smaller than infinite, generally not larger than a 320 x 200 screen area, and bounded by ice walls. There is a spacial vacuum, that causes frictionless motion across the screen, until stopped by another wall. It is up to you, the player, to plan the best route around the various pocket universes of each of the levels, to collect all the stars and complete the levels.

It is deceptively easy at first, but later levels offer all sorts of traps and dead ends, from where you bounce unhappily back and forth forever, glumly contemplating that final uncollected star. At least until you restart the level.

There is also an 'advanced' mode, which offers refinements such as teleporters and colour changers, as you can only pick up stars that are the same colour as you are, so these things are essential when there are different colours of objects. There are twenty levels for two worlds, so ten levels of each.

As a further bonus, there is a level editor, where you can create your own levels for inclusion in the game. The high score table retains your best time and is permanently stored.

The Atari version is described as GEM compatible, and works with anything from a stock ST with 1 MB of RAM, through to Falcon and CT60 class hardware. It is more correctly considered to be Atari VDI compatible currently, rather than fully GEM compliant. You are restricted to a playfield that is accommodated within the 320 x 200 pixel low resolution mode on the ST, so it is best played that way.

It isn't fully working on all 'third party Atari's' just yet. Aranym causes some screen peculiarities when redrawing and the sound goes around in a 'just crashed' loop that can't be turned off. It isn't yet fully compatible with Firebee at time of writing (November 2015.)

It does work on Hatari though and obviously, real hardware. There may well be a proper GEM version of the game on the way, which should hopefully eliminate the issues described above and also allow for a larger or zoomed game window on higher end systems.

This is the actual size!