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Review

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Huge playlist archive with games from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxOanVBhqd3shFv7eRVs8C6iYc1zJzeJ0
What we have here is a new way of making a Spectrum game! We have a storyline and we are getting a story told as we are playing the game. There is nine (YES: 9 ..!!) tap files, and five of these contains a constant loading of screens that tells the story, while four of them contains games. It works this way: You load tap 1, and when it is finished loading the story screens, the last screen will tell you to reset the Spectrum and load tap 2. Tap 2 contains the first part of the game, and when completing this you are told to load tap 3 that contains screens and story etc etc…

We are following the Goldenstark family and the story is set on the planet Aeon. In each of the four parts of the game we are playing with different characters from the family. In the first part we have landed on Aeon and we control Jesper Goldenstark in his space suit. Running and jumping in a space suit is not very easy and this has been put into the gameplay. Jesper moves slow so the timing of jumping and passing enemies has to be very accurate to succed.

In part two we are controlling a spaceship seen from bird perspective and the object is to find nine survey spots to check these for crystal deposits. There is a lot of dust tornadoes in this area that has to be avoided. In part three we have to go up, up, up and up on different towers and install dishes on each screen, and the biggest problem here is construction robots throwing out garbage of the windows, but also keep an eye on incoming UFO’s. Part four offers a good old platform game with a lot of running and jumping and enemies to avoid.

This is “just” an AGD game, so it is not pushing the Spectrum to it’s limits in any kind of way, but it is an extremely well made game. To avoid color clash it is made the easy way by keeping everything that moves in the same color, but you hardly notice that because of the clever use of chosen objects and backgrounds, except for the last level where everything seems a little green.

A really nice and big game with four completely different parts offering big variety in gameplay, a long storyline with lots of nicely drawn screens, so the game has an intro, middle sequences, and an ending. And let us not forget the four stunning soundtracks! Everything can be loaded separately if you would like to do that. It also controls well so I do not see what’s not to like here.

The game comes for free with the free online magazine “ZX Spectrum Gamer” issue 5 apr 2018. Imagine if this had been on a cover tape for one of the magazines back in the 80s…

Rating = 88%

Game design, graphics, programming: Paul Weller
AY music: Sergey Letyagin

The game can be downloaded for free here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1se_CsF4TJHaa8WuNWFTqG-dzPbCcBaAs
ZX Spectrum Gamer magazines: http://www.sunteam.co.uk/zxgamer/index.htm