Colour Maze

Post date: 12-Jun-2016 18:13:00

Game by: Andrew J Green

Reviewed by: Simon Ferré

I don't know where to start with this very nice but simple idea. Firstly, we are not presented with a tape file, rather a simple snapshot file. For sake of ease of use, Andrew has provided a snapshot in both SNA and Z80 format. Straight away that's quite helpful, but we don't like helpful in a crap game competition. I suppose the only saving grace is that the snapshot must have been saved in 128K mode, hence the much larger (and quite frankly unnecessary) size of file. Being a snapshot, there's no loading screen. In this case I think this is a good thing. It brings you much closer to the, erm, action!

Having to hit enter on the RUN keyword is a nice touch. Once into the game, a fairly basic but animated title screen is shown:

Thus follows a small instruction screen, complete with spelling mistake (unless you speak in Pirate speak). Bonus points aplenty.

The five different levels simply increase the number of colours in the maze that appears. Three on level 1, increasing by 1 each level until the hardest level. Playing for the first time, you start at the bottom of the maze, and quite likely are unable to move at all. You have to hit space quite frequently to redraw the maze, which is quite slow, and you more than often find yourself still stuck in only one square with no way to move in any direction. Each time you hit SPACE you are penalised. These points quickly add up and the lower the score the better.

Once you escape you are given your score on the Congratulations screen.

This is the point where the most obvious bugs in the game show themselves. Reading the LISTing, there is no RANDOMIZE command, so every time you reload the game the first maze (assuming you select the same skill level) is drawn in exactly the same way. Next, on the second and successive play through the players score is not cleared, and the x and y coordinates of the player do not get reset. This means that you start in the last position you were in when you played the previous go, and you can never better your last score as you will start again with your last score and you will only have to move up to escape. That makes the game a one-time use only, and spoils the enjoyment (if there was any to start with). That gains even more bonus points.

All in all, a pretty nice idea, badly executed which is exactly what this competition is about, and this would have been exactly the sort of thing that would have appeared on Cassette 50, bugs and all.

Exercises:

1. Fix the game so variables are reset at the start of every game.

2. Insert the RANDOMIZE command so the game is different on first run.

3. Provide some more sound effects.

Score: 0xBAD out of 0xFAB