Agatha Christie's Parrot

By Jason Railton

Genre: Arcade: Swoop ‘n’ Snoop

Jason points out that the idea for this game was conceived decades ago “when a children's nature programme on BBC TV asked viewers to send in wildlife-themed computer games”, but only now has he realised this vision.

We can breathe a sigh of relief in that unlike Jason’s other entries, Agatha Christie’s Parrot doesn’t attempt to be a technical marvel.  The first ‘flaw’, as Jason points out, is that it doesn’t actually even feature a Parrot – it is in fact a Scarlet Macaw (Ara Macao)!  As a keen birder of course I recognised this instantly as I keep several in my study at any one time.

These instructions were provided:
****
In this you take on the role of the famous crime-solving bird, flying
high and swooping down to collect important clues to solving a great
murder-mystery.  Press any key to dive, and try to collect more clues
than you miss in order to solve the mystery.
****

It’s actually quite fun!  As you press the any key, the bird follows a nice character spaced swoop (perhaps Agatha Christie’s Peregrine would be more appropriate?) down onto a passing clue and upon acquisition you are one step closer to solving the mystery.  The bird animation is great, as are the UDGs, representing typical clues you might see in a murder mystery, like the dagger, the cocktail, the bomb, the train (?) and the err teddy bear.

Barmy, funny, simple and a bit crappy.  Ticks all the boxes for me.

Ah mon ami, ze little grey beak ‘az eet all.

Merci beaucoup Jason!

Download here.

Murk Alfa

By Jason Railton

Genre: Vexing vectors

Murk Alfa (a Star Wars reference?) is Jason Railton’s third entry to this year’s competition and this one is a jaw dropper.  It features wireframe graphics and brings great games and demos like ‘Escape from Targ’ and ‘Hunter’ to mind, and they were on the more powerful Amiga.

EDIT > It's been pointed out that it is in fact 'Mercenary: Escape from Targ' and there was a perfectly good Spectrum port available.  Not sure about 'Hunter', and short of doing a quick web search for it there is literally nothing I can do.

Jason provided the following info:

************************

MISSON BRIEFING

Due to an impending meteoric catastrophe, an entire but obscure

planetary system has been entirely evacuated.  Your task is to

infiltrate the capital trading district of one of the wealthiest

planet's major cities and steal the largest diamond in the history of

the universe for your shady employer.  You arrive and leave via the

city's Spaceport.  Due to automated security systems still in place, you

must procure all the materials to complete your quest from within the

city itself.

 

CONTROLS

O and P - turn left / right

Q and A - step forward / back

W and S - sprint forward / back

 

SPACE or M - Fire / Select

To enter a building, walk under it, stand on its lift pad and press

FIRE, then B or 1-9 for the floor, 0 to exit.

When you have a suitable ticket, stand at a bus stop and press FIRE to

summon the bus.

When you have obtained a city map, press M to view it.

Press I to view an inventory of collected items.

With a suitable transport device, press E and D to move faster, but only

along roads.

With a suitable flight device, hold FIRE to gain altitude.

************************


So far so good, in fact you might be wondering why this game isn’t in the best game 2013 competition instead.  Well, as good as Murk Alfa is there are a few tiny drawbacks, firstly the speed is buttock clenchingly slow (which is understandable because there is a lot going on), secondly the upper screen clears as it is redrawn, so you get a blinking effect when moving, third I can’t seem to solve any of the puzzles or make lifts work and fourth it returns to BASIC quite a lot.  With this in mind I began to suspect that Murk Alfa is not quite the finished article, however Jason gave his assurance that this is “a fully complete technical marvel, and has in no way given up because MCoder III runs out of memory trying to compile it.”

Ah.

Nevertheless, Murk Alfa is a tantalising glimpse of a (potentially) amazing game, so whack your emulator right up and watch your Spectrum throw some astonishing wireframe shapes.  And erm if you can solve any of the puzzles let me know…

Thankyou Jason!

Download here.

ALS: Tactics

By Jason Railton

Genre: Gardening: Strategy

Ok, I’m pleased to announce the third lawnmowing based entry to the CGC, and what an entry it is! (NB- ALS is a reference to Advanced Lawnmower Simulator for those not in the know).

The game takes a disconcerting 2 mins 30 secs to load (probably because it has not one, not two, but THREE banks of UDGs!), and leads into this rather professional looking screen with some rather erm…slightly less professional beeper noise (I would call it music but I kept flinching involuntarily on all the high notes). Then you press a key and have to wait 10 seconds for some data to configure, which doesn’t sound a lot but certainly feels it.

Before playing the game, in the finest tradition of Duncan MacDonald’s Advanced LawnMower Simulator, you get to choose your mower: now this is where the fun begins, because if it wasn’t exciting enough to mow a lawn strategically you get to choose the hardware to do it. I must confess, I’ve played the game at least 600 times now, and I’ve only noticed the most subtle differences between mowers – having said that I favour the QUALCURSED Badger s40.

As the intro screen suggests the aim of the game is to mow the lawn, but ALS is clever like. It is a puzzle based game in which you can circle the lawn around the beautiful white path, made of the finest Portland stone by the looks of it. Once you commit to mowing a line you can’t change direction unless something blocks your way, in which case you can choose a new direction or press restart if blocked.  The main crap factor here comes from the painfully slow trundle of the mower.

Once you’ve mown a bit of lawn you can’t walk on it again, and the reason for this is not clear – it could have been a radioactive mower (using liberal use of the FLASH attribute), alien infected grass or a dicky knee, however no explanation is offered and we’ll just have to suspend our disbelief. It does at least leave us with a rather nifty strategy game. One that I find pretty challenging, though after staring at it a while the solution usually becomes obvious. I’ve yet to complete this game ‘paniagua’but with cheats I notice it loops after 10 levels, which is about as much lawnmowing as a person can take anyway (and at least you have the option to go on should you want to). Every time you progress a level your abode (or the one you’re mowing anyway) becomes more majestic, from castle to mediterranean villa to spikey looking magenta death castle - it clear that lawnmower man is going somewhere!

ALS Tactics is a big mound of silage with some pound coins hidden in it.

Thankyou Jason!

Tipshack: don’t belive the WALKMO Turbo X+Alpha is as fast as it sounds and crank the speed up on your emulator (real hardware is available) to make this a really rather playable game.

HACK SACK: Level prance: Break into the game each level and type LET t=0:CONTINUE

Download here.

Paralympic Obstacle Kayaking

By Jason Railton

Genre: row 'em up

I’m most pleased to show this entry from Jason (Buzzsaw) Railton.  Most speccy fans will know Buzzsaw+ is the first finalised 'proper' game with Spectrum multicolour graphics.  This involves some expert coding twinned with skilled game design, which obviously has no place in this competition so no more will be said about it here, but imagine my surprise to see a CGC entry from him!  Well maybe not so surprising as it was one of the winning entries in the coding competition held at the Spectrum 30^th birthday event in Cambridge last year.  Even still, I had my doubts that Jason was actually capable of writing a crap game, well I was almost wrong…

After loading we get a nice cyan screen and an uncomfortable wait for some vertical blue stripes to fill it, which are then removed by a CLS shortly after!  An auspicious start.  The main game is a different matter, and here is the authors description of the gameplay:

It's a kayaking simulation designed to be played by anyone with a range of physical disabilities as it requires only one button press to play.  The kayaker only paddles on one side at a time, so goes round in circles if you don't intervene. Press any key to make him swap sides. Keep pressing with a steady rhythm to go in a straight line. Stop pressing to turn.  Try to reach the black exit square before the time runs out to complete each course. Pick up magenta tokens to open the exit, or green keys to let you remove barriers.

Sounds crap, but is it?  Not really, a well animated sprite appears on an ok looking gaming area and to see rotation of this type in BASIC looks like something clever has gone on.  P.O.K is quite good fun and is reminiscent of Albatrossity (a good Spectrum game for those not in the know), so this game is a kernel of a great idea that has been restricted by BASIC and the 4 hours the author had to create it.

Bonus crap points are gained by the fact that it is possible for the kayak to whack its way out of the gaming area, and thus bring forth a stop to the game and a return to BASIC (the holy grail for any crap game coder).  So despite his upsetting show of skill, there is a glimmer of hope he can write a proper crap game!  (just make sure it’s 2 colours per square mind…).

Having said all this, I'm still surfing the anti cynicism tidal wave that was the 2012 London Olympics, so anything Olympian or Paralypian is brilliant, including this game, and erm.....even Stonkers!  Thankyou Jason!

Tipshack: try playing with a bodily protuberance other than fingers, for a more challenging gaming experience.

HACKPACK: Infinite time: in line 21 remove LET t=t-1 (or change it to LET t=t or LET t=10, but nothing else at all will work)

Download here.