in which Al drags the waters of his collection of recent Spectrum titles and has a nosey at the oddest he can find...
QUEST FOR WITCHCRAFT
(Scene+ Austria, 2011)
Once again I pat myself on the back for being so diligent as to find a game for this feature that begins with a Q. Most lesser mortals aren’t brave enough to do A-Zs for this very reason, though I don’t like to blow my own trumpet of course. Surveys show that not very many people will read this article, but if you are one of the few who does take time to appreciate the more obscure things in life rather than read and repeat the same old stuff regurgitated for the umpteenth time, I duly salute you. You're my kinda people <3. That's meant to be a heart, but it doesn't really work with this font, pchah.
Wow that was some padding. Pretty offensive too! Alright, to business – this game hails from Austria for a nice change, from the retro sounding Scene+. The author Leszek Chmielewski Daniel seems to have made quite a few puzzle games for the Spectrum, many in a foreign language, only it won’t be foreign to him of course. The music’s by good old Mister Beep from Poland too, a man perfectly named by his parents who foresaw what he would be doing in his future life. And boy can he make our beloved machine beep good.
Jewel Quest. That’s what this game is based on. Never heard of it, although it does strongly resemble that annoying affair Candy Crush Saga, the very definition of a game you play not for any enjoyment, but simply to pass time. The point of this game is that you have to destroy 8 evil witches by the power of Candycrush! You have to link 3 similar pictures together and make their background squares blue. This ye must do until the entire screenery is coloured blue. Then the witch dies somehow, and along comes another. Kill all 8 and you can rule the world yourself and be a malevolent bastard – now you’re talking!
It’s standard stuff, although it’s nice to see such things on the Spectrum rather than your mobile in work for a change. The gameplay is as repetitive but compelling as you might expect and it all ticks over quite nicely. It has fairly random time limits (not always less than the previous level strangely) and lacks the nice dropping-down animation of other versions, but that aside it plays okay. The little witchy pictures vary somewhat in quality but are a nice touch anyway. You start with Yulia who looks okay, then Kasuga who looks weird, Wykit who is odd too, Asaka who is coquettish anime stylee, a little bit of Monica in my life etc. I did pretty well until the conniving Lydia stopped me dead, even though I had a seemingly generous 10 minutes to get to grips with her…
RABBIT IN WONDERLAND
(Javier Fopiani, 2015)
This game probably shouldn’t be a curiosity really, there’s nothing particularly odd about it. What is odd though is that it doesn’t seem to be particularly well known. Authored by Javier Fopiani who went on to make the acclaimed Alien Girl and the equally acclaimed Nosy, this was an earlier effort of his. In the same year as doing this game, he also produced Rabbit In Nightmareland, which seems to be a Halloween version of this one, although the game appears to be somewhat different. He dedicates all his games to his Dulcinea, which is quite sweet (I assume it’s a person). And the Nightmareland game is even based on “the nightmare of my Dulcinea”. All very intriguing and baroque. Probably.
But for this one, you play the bunny in the Alice in Wonderland true-life story. After Alice managed to escape, the evil Queen of Hearts was pi$$ed and commanded you to break all the looking glasses (mirrors to you) in the shire so no-one could ever come back in. You have to jump on them, which sounds extremely painful, especially with unclothed bunny feet horribly exposed. If you don’t manage it, you know what she’ll do, almost certainly involving putting a certain distance between your body and your floppy-eared head. Gulp. So your role is that of a hapless anti-hero, or stooge really I suppose. They have feelings too, you know, being a goon isn’t as easy as you might think. They have really poor pension rights.
It's platforming naturally, but done with some purpose. You have to jump on mirrors from above as if they’re Super Mario villains, find keys to unlock doors and eat carrots to keep your coat all nice and fluffy. If you’re going to make a platformer, you need something to keep people’s interest and in this game that thing is an ever-decreasing time limit. You find clocks lying around – this is Wonderland after all – to top up your tank of time, but you’re usually running around trying to do things as fast as you can most of the time. As the bunny says himself at the start “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date”. Cue panic. Sheer Panic. Blind Panic. Panic by Mikrogen.
The graphics and colour are good as you’d expect, and the sound is very nice with a tune that I’d really love to know just how long its duration is. Because you think it’s repeating in standard fashion, but then you hear a different bit. How bewildering and disorientating, but beguiling and intriguing. Now I’m starting to sound like the Mad Hatter himself, one of the many tripped-out residents from the book. Javier knows his stuff, so I’d recommend you have a go at this and also Rabbit In Nightmareland – they’re hidden platforming gems.
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