Curiosities of the Modern Age: O-P

in which Al drags the waters of his collection of recent Spectrum titles and has a nosey at the oddest he can find...

Funny looking skulls these people must have had

OSSUARY

(Cyningstan, 2013)

Damian Walker IS Cyningstan. And Cyningstan IS Damian Walker. Think so anyway, as he also authored Barbarians, which Crash quite liked I seem to recall. And Intergalactic Space Rescue, a simple Minefield type game which I briefly tried a while back. But I’ve picked this game which seems to be about birdhouses (“That’s Aviary”-Ed.) as my Curiosity that begins with an O. If it wasn’t for this, you might be reading a review about a modern version of Othello. Or probably not reading it.

Early on our hero is a happy camper, with his 3 apples and lollipop

So how come you’re stuck between a rock and a boney place? Well you’re trying to destroy a naughty necromancer who has taken up residence therein. So you’ve got to off him before your own little skull is added to all the ones around you. The good news is there’s treasure down there, plus some probably gross food (Where did these apples come from?) plus the odd weapon to fend off the many bats, rats and cats, sorry spiders, that seem to have it in for you, even though they rarely trouble us in their overground incarnations.

Tragically for our guy he can't move diagonally to that inviting exit

24 levels thar be, and each one is randomly generated each time, so you might face a relatively long trek to reach the next, or it could just be around the corner. And the enemies are tres polite and will only move when you do, so take your time why don’t you? It’s very much like Vradark’s Sphere in both these respects, only this game appears to fit into 16K unless I’m much mistaken, so it’s a reduced version kinda. There’s a nice colourful border around the play area (that sounds like a kid’s thing, sorry) and an inventory box where you can store your cans of fizzy drink, snacks and weapons plus armour as and when you come across them.

Well this looks most unpromising, Shelob and her mates are pi$$ed

This is quite a fun little dungeon crawler, but as is often the case with these things, I tend to find the first however many levels a bit of a breeze, then suddenly something will eff you up and stop you dead. Fighting the bats and rats is easy enough as long as you don’t get surrounded, but the second the spiders appear, death soon seems to follow. Using weapons and a shield does help, and apparently there are magical objects later on in the game, but I still fared badly. Nevertheless, it’s colourful old-school fun for a bit and I can guarantee that some will love it.

Yeah alright, that Pheel guy's pretty handy with the pixels

PIXEL QUEST ZERO

(Magazin Espectro, 2013)

Here’s a rather leftfield offering from the omnipresent Mr. Saukas, plus his near-omnipresent mate MmcM and, erm, Pheel. Well I’m sure he’s very lovely too. In fact, if he did the loading screen for this game, plus its two prequels which were of similar standard, he’s a pixelart demigod. So some heavyweight names behind this game, wonder what the heck it’s all about? Is it arcade or adventure, maybe an interactive novel or flight sim?

Getting started can be tricky. Cleary I've mastered this one already

It was released on ‘Magazin Espectro’ which sounds like one of those modern-day 16/48 type affairs which must come on a Dixons C60, and was preceded by the original Pixel Quest and Pixel Quest 2000. Will we ever track those pesky pixels down? I launched straight into this one, partly because I had no English instructions and party because that’s what I always do. I thought I knew what I was doing, but a few frustrating goes later, I had the distinct impression that I didn’t. Alright, let’s check out some helpful screenshots from the internet to see if they can shed any light.

This one's all but done, whatever it is. Maybe a few errors though...

Ah, okay, right. Let’s try that then. Hmmm. Oh hang on, it’s like one of those annoying sudoku things. You have to use your powers of logic to slowly build up a picture, which when complete displays a well-known Speccy sprite, such as pesky Boy Wander off of Skool Daze. Each column and row tells you how many of the empty grid slots must be filled, and the trick is getting your verticals to match up with your horizontals. If it says ‘12’ there’ll be 12 in a row, but starting where? If it says ‘2.5.8.1’ then there’ll be that many separate blocks but with gaps in between, of what size you must find out yourself.

Yay, my T.L.L. plane in all its glory. Just the 10 more to do now, better book some leave

If it sounds painful, well it can be. But like a sudoku it can also be quite a relaxing experience too if you get on a roll. Only let’s face it, this is much more fun than just putting a load of numbers in boxes. As your sprite starts to take shape, you get a sense of how it should look, which helps things too. But apply your cold logic and you won’t go far wrong I think. It took me about half an hour to do one at last, the cute li’l plane from T.L.L., but I did feel a certain sense of achievement afterwards. A bit like doing these beautifully-crafted and witty reviews. No? Please yourselves! (Frankie Howerd lives on)