C64 Game - Groovy Garden

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Published on March 8, 2015 4:34:41 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpMnWFrnrLA

Duration: 8:07

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Just heard about this on Lemon64. In the words of the programmer: "The aim of the game is to grow four Pygmy Pines on each level, within the S.G.T. (how many of you would have guessed this stood for Seasonal Growing Time?)

The S.G.T. is a continual countdown and can't be altered. If all four Pygmy Pines have not been grown before S.G.T. reaches zero, its' game over.

TIME is the time until the next Pygmy Pine appears, but whenever a nasty hits the ground TIME is increased a little bit.

FAITH indicates how much faith the Pygmy Pines have in you and decreases every time a nasty hits the ground. If FAITH reaches zero, it's game over.

PUMP POWER is pretty self explanatory and diminishes whenever you touch nasties but will replenish if you stay out of harms way. If PUMP POWER runs out, it's game over.

The Pygmy Pines confidence in you can be replenished by soothing and nurturing the ground. This is Potty the gardener's job. Once you have taken out ten nasties, indicated by the SHOT counter, Potty's shed light will come on for a short amount of time indicating his willingness to undertake his ground-soothing duties. But, he's not the bravest of souls and his light will only stay on for a short amount of time before he switches it back off and goes back to sleep.

You need to get across to his shed and tap on his window to give him the all clear so he can venture out into the garden.

Once Potty has come out of his shed he will use his patented ground-soother and FAITH will start to increase. But be aware, he is getting on a bit and could easily fall asleep on the job. If this happens then tap on his window again to wake him up (admittedly that doesn't make a lot of sense does it really, but it was the eighties and we were young Very Happy )

After playing the game again after all this time, it was clear to us how important it is to get Potty out there as much as you can and to keep him protected as much as possible. Don't know what others think but we seemed to lose most games by FAITH reaching zero, rather than diminished PUMP POWER or running out of S.G.T.

Something that we'd completely forgotten about is the level-jump feature built in. Press F1 when you're on the start screen and you can jump to the highest level you have reached so far, but only up to level eight."

Created by the Boulton brothers and released in 1985 by Central Solutions, who released a bunch of Spectrum games in the 80s, a couple of which were made by Gremlin Graphics guys John and Greg A. Holmes.

VERY unfair review: https://archive.org/details/zzap64-magazine-016/page/n93/mode/2up