Xadom vs. X=Y=Z
Current Score: Old Games 10 New Games 13
XADOM
(Quicksilva, 1983)
Way back in the mists of time, The Game Lords were indeed mighty. They ruled the Spectrum gaming landscape, together with other supreme deities who insisted that you should “play the game” and even those who claimed to be “the name of the game”. And lo they produced a number of space escapades and dungeon adventures, and verily were the primitive early gamers duly enthralled, as all they’d had to entertain themselves up to that point were a pixel (ball) moving around a screen, and 2 lines (bats) with which to hit said pixel. Among the early titles was a certain Xadom, which by its looks appeared to be another 3D space oddity in the making.
Spacey yes, but actually it’s a maze game. I thought it was bound to be a slow-moving wireframe 3D space romp, or else one of those grid games the groovy Jeff Minter specialised in when he wasn’t going on about llamas. The ‘prologue’ in the inlay is insanity itself, a lovely little story about an unsuspecting employee of some large megalomaniac future corporation, almost certainly owned by some Musk descendant or other, being sent to a strange new world to infiltrate an alien base and locate a very important ‘aartifact’ (not an aardvark) which those cheeky aliens stole off of us hoomans. In the introduction a bizarre but strangely compelling Spirographed face will explain this to you. Very. Slowly.
So you go through a maze of 20 rooms, on the easiest level, trying to locate the aardvark, then take it to room 20 to teleport back home again. You can choose harder missions if you fancy it, notably one involving a terrifying sounding 200 rooms, if you plan on living into your 110s. Every room has 3 teleporters you can go through, one of which will return you whence you came, but helpfully the game numbers them for you once you’ve been through each. The rooms are full of alien nasties and traps, plus a large number of objects to deal with same, though you’ll need the exact right one to dispatch each particular enemy. A bit like in Atic Atac with the cross and the vampire etc. – great game, but those bits were a bit irrelevant surely? Just walk round them and concentrate on the big gold key. Anyway, this isn’t an Atic Atac review.
Talking of reviews, not many mags of significance bothered to review Xadom. Crash probably didn't exist at that point, so that's a decent excuse at least. Your Spectrum, as it was called in those days, gave it an even shorter review than mine, a whole two sentences! Including the phrase "arcade quality". Come now, let's not go crazy here. Big K, the nuts people, gave it 2/3 in their infallible ratings system. But the mighty-ish Personal Computer News at least did it justice, with a decent-length review, even a screenshot! Dolores Fairman (yes, really) opined "it's pretty good value in all aspects, if a touch slow and repetitive." Slightly contradictory. Or is it???
When you die, Aidad the Spirograph Wizard kindly reincarnates you, giving you 4 goes in total. This game really doesn’t want you to go away and do something more productive. It’s quite novel for a maze game then, in appearance at least. The 3D landscape is a clever idea, even if the sprites in the foreground can look a bit odd, being mostly 2D. It’s a bit on the slow side, as BASIC rears its ancient head at least in part, but generally it’s not bad to play for a while at least, until the inevitable ‘maze boredness’ kicks in. Overall it’s odd and unique, and very close to being passable.
X=Y=Z
(Bob's Stuff, 2014)
X=Y=Z. Eh? What kind of equation do you call that, Bob’s Stuff? I have to admit I don’t quite follow the title of this game, but it’s probably something beyond my rusty mathematical knowledge. Is the answer 4? No? Okay, moving on. Here are the ridiculously complicated instructions – “Guide your cube around each level by placing instruction tiles to roll, slide, twist and teleport on your way to the exit.” Simply do it 334 times and you’ve completed the game – hope you’ve got a long empty day ahead of you.
So Bob, he of the Stuff, is Bob Smith, who seems to have spent most of his time attempting the impossible on the humbler-than-humble ZX81. Like Flappy Birds and, somehow, 3D Soft Solid Ant Attack! Wonder if he managed to replicate the noise when you get bitten by an ant, that would be something. He’s made a couple of puzzlers on the comparatively high-tech Speccy too, Gem Chaser and Sokobaarn for instance. But this is his most high-profile release I think, even gaining a delicious sounding “Sizzler” award from Retro Gamer.
Everything’s in 3D as you can see, and there’s quite a nice interface where you select which type of block (solid, glass, steel, teleporty, slippery, dubious, odorous) to put and where, nicely user-friendly. But there are limited numbers of each type of piece you can use, otherwise it’d be a cinch. You can attempt levels as often as you like, so there’ll be plenty of time spent falling into nothingness, then tweaking things slightly, then giving up and starting again, the usual kind of thing. You’ll almost certainly be able to complete quite a few levels, then get stuck, possibly on level 10 (Tip Toe), then eventually progress either by using your grey matter or an RZX playback. Ahem.
Aesthetically this is a very nice looking thing for a puzzle game. The 3D graphics look very crisp and neat and are animated beautifully when the cube starts rolling (if indeed a cube can roll). Colour is largely white, unless it changes at, say, level 100, but on the face of it, that’s probably best for such a game – as clear as possible, none of that moody but murky magenta on black. And you get a nice tune every now and then into the bargain, thanks to Chris Cowley. Thanks Chris Cowley! Overall it’s a very polished and laid-back affair, perfect to wile away a few hours on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.
LET'S GO TO THE VIDEPRINTER!
BEST GRAPHICS X=Y=Z
BEST COLOUR XADOM
BEST SOUND X=Y=Z
MOST ORIGINAL XADOM
MOST PLAYABLE X=Y=Z
MOST ADDICTIVE X=Y=Z
FINAL SCORE
XADOM 2 X=Y=Z 4
X=Y=Z wins!
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