Risky Woods

Spanish Games

I'm digging up another oldie video from my YouTube channel (please subscribe), and this time it's Risky Woods, developed by Dinamic - the ones who gave us a Marine with wiggly legs. This time, we are Rohan, a young knife-wielding chap from a place called The Lost Land, a once-peaceful place protected by Monks.

These monks guarded the wisdom of the Lost Land until Draxos turned up to ruin everything! He brought his legions of evil armies and turned all the monks into statues. Nobody is safe, children are crying, and evil roams the lands. What can we do? Of course, we are going to enter the woods, free the monks, and defeat Draxos. It's gonna be a tough challenge, but come on, kids are crying. It's time to kick some demonic ass!

I know, another silly story for another day in retro gaming land. So, let's play...

Hurry and free all the monks to save the land from the evil Draxos!

Sexy platforming!

Risky Woods is a scrolling platformer that has us leaping across platforms, frantically banging on the fire button to kill everything in sight. Each level is stuffed with enemies who are only too eager to rush onto the screen, but there are lots of bonuses. Just don't forget why you're here; the monks need freeing before you exit.

This game feels like a cross between Ork and Black Tiger. I love how responsive the controls are, and they need to be - many enemies are constantly rushing onto the screen at a frequent pace. It's quite overwhelming, but great fun without ever crushing your spirit. Think Black Lamp and you've got the idea.

Each level is superbly designed and stunning with lush environments, high details, and fancy effects. However, it's the sprites that I love because they are large and superbly animated - just look at those skeletons!! Slain enemies leave behind gold coins to collect for use in the shop to purchase much-needed weapons.

It plays well and looks great. What, you need another screenshot to prove it? Okay...

There's no denying the stunning artwork, which is some of the best I've ever seen.

Aesthetics

Visually, this is a beauty with stunning landscapes, raster backdrops, and superb spooky sprites. The level of artwork is impressive, and I dare anyone to say otherwise. The scrolling is responsive and smooth, but I can’t help wondering why they push the boat out and implement STe support.

Like the visuals, the sonix do not disappoint with great chiptunes by Jose Martin. The sound effects are nice yet nothing remarkable, but they do their job. Yeah, it's the superb music that works wonders.

A gorgeous game like this needs many levels, as this mini-map so kindly displays...

Check out the map that shows your torturous journey through the Lost Lands.

The CryptO'pinion?

My problem with this game is its difficulty. The constant wave of enemies is overwhelming and made worse by the need to crouch down and collect dropped coins during combat, rather than simply walking over them. Also, touching an enemy causes you to drop your entire loot and momentarily lose the ability to fire!

Despite all that, this game is an absolute blast! It’s thrilling, frantic, and incredibly addictive. The joystick controls are fantastic and perfectly complemented by the stunning visuals and impressive special effects. This game truly showcases the capabilities of the STf and is one of the best platformers available.

Downloads for floppy and hard drive.

Bug Spray

Robbie the Robot

Pssst, wanna play a game bursting with fun? Then check out Bug Spray, developed by Philip Bishop, which should please gamers with both green fingers and a natural love for killing nasty insects. In fact, it might look familiar if you're old enough to remember the 1983 Speccy original by Ultimate Play The Game?

Sunflowers need protection from hungry pests who nibble at them. To stop this, we use different cans of bug spray, as each type is designed to kill a specific creature. So spraying a bug with the wrong type will only stun them. Sadly, our gardener can only carry one, so it's a rush battling the swarming critters.

Just like Jet Pac, this is like the original, but it isn't an exact replica. It's close and brought back many happy memories for me. The graphics are pretty much ZX Spectrum standards, and the sprites are cute, especially the spiders. Sound effects are adequate, but there is an option for chipmusic which is a better option.

Bug Spray is a blatant rip-off, but it works well. My only criticism is manoeuvring the gardener into the gaps, which is tight. That aside, I've enjoyed what is essentially a fantastic 16-bit conversion of Pssst!

- DOWNLOAD -

Scanners

I was going through old recordings and found this, which is an absolute classic!!
Download available on Demozoo - make sure you turn up the volume

Credits: "Alan, Bill, and Dave"

(I wonder who these people were because there's little information out there!)

Bombaman

Bomberman!

Ever since I first played Erik And The Floaters on my ZX Spectrum, I have enjoyed playing Bomberman clones, and here is another called Bombaman. Developed by Kevin Callahan for the Atari STe, this conversion is multiplayer for two to four people, with support for the often-forgotten enhanced joystick ports!

Being a take on Bomberman means we need to freely blow stuff up! Well, good news because Bombaman has fantastic controls that are light and responsive. There are tons of power-ups available and contain some favourites, like a molotov cocktail and chucking bombs over a wall. Others can increase the number of bombs we are able to drop, but watch out for chain reactions during their explosions. Roller skates speed up gameplay whilst flap jackets protect us, but slower players better watch out for zombies.

Want a screenshot? Well, brace yourself and get ready to squint...

It starts tame, but soon you're using power-ups and blasting everything!

Aesthetics

The visuals are incredibly colourful, but may require sunglasses to protect your eyes from all that glare!! The colour is completely over the top and looks like a child would have designed it, but who said Kevin was an artist? The game is smooth at 50fps, thanks to the Blitter and is also displayed in overscan, too.

Chipmusic plays throughout, which I really enjoyed because it's downright awesome. It never overpowers the DMA sound effects bursting out of your Atari STe, and this is how games should be!!

The colour palette is trippy, so let's annoy your eyes one final time with another screenshot...

All that colour could drive you insane - if it wasn't such a great game!!

The CryptO'pinion?

This is a brilliant multiplayer game that has lived up to my hopes and expectations. It's a shame there is no solo mode, but I'm sure you will all love gathering around the computer to play it. In fact, my daughter says it's her favourite Atari ST game [watch our video recording]. High praise from an iPad generation kid!

A cracking game for those who enjoy throwing bombs at their friends. Who doesn't?

Update: Kevin has found the floppy disk of the registered version. It's safely stored on AtariMania. Go on and grab it!

Ben Pritchard

It's interview time!

When AtariCrypt was a little baby, I came upon a scrolling platformer called The Curse Of Bolda, which is a fun game I really enjoyed playing. However, I was new to Hatari and figured I was doing something wrong because it seemed sluggish, so I whacked it up to the dizzy heights of 16Mhz and everything was perfect.

Shortly afterwards, I heard from the developer who seemed chuffed that people were still playing his old games, and (eventually) I got around to playing his other game called Kev's World. This is a flick-screen platformer I really enjoyed, probably because STOS coped better without trying to scroll the screen?!

I've since been talking to Ben, who has found the original [registered] disks of The Curse Of Bolda, which are now available from AtariMania. However, I couldn't leave it there: I had to ask a few questions for our interview section. My sincere gratitude to Ben for hunting down the disks and answering my questions.

Ben Pritchard - The Interview

Hello Ben, please introduce yourself.

Well, first of all, my STory can't be told without that of my best mate Paul; he introduced me to the Atari ST and was my "sparring partner" in making games. We started out making text adventures at first - me on an Amstrad CPC at the time, and him using ST Basic - around 1988/89. Then he got his hands on the Shoot 'em up Construction Kit, which sold me on making the jump to the Atari. And then - just by sheer chance - I ended up getting the Discovery pack, through which we discovered STOS and start the voyage of discovery/development/geeky one-upmanship that ultimately led to Kev's World, the Curse of Bolda and indeed what I'm up to right now...


Which Atari ST were you using?

I started out with the 520STFM that came in the Discovery pack, then upgraded to the 1040STE Music Maker pack a couple of years later. I never had any hard drives or memory upgrades. Having attempted to solder adaptors into place, in a failed attempt to boost my 520 up to a 1meg, kind of put me off. And being in my teens, at the time, I didn't have the money for much else.

Although technically inferior, I personally thought Kev's World was a cracking platformer.

Tell us a little about your two games.

Both Kev's and Curse are very special to me - Curse because it was the first game I had actually released (despite it actually being the sequel to Kev's!), and because it had the 8-way scrolling and all the stuff I had originally wanted in Kev's but couldn't get working at the time. But I had a very special moment with Kev's - a few weeks after releasing it, I got a letter from a chap in Scotland (this is about 1995, before broadband and home internet/email became a thing) saying how much he enjoyed the game and asking for a hint on getting past the boss. That really struck a chord - someone was so into something I had made that they had taken the time to write to me and let me know...

What's so special about Kevin?

Kev was kind of an evolving design... Originally he was a spaceman - believe it or not - for another game which I was working on called "Galanium". Then his space helmet was replaced by the face and red baseball cap for another game called "AstroKid" (again, abandoned). Finally, he got made over into the black t-shirt, blue jeans and big white trainers you see it in the games. As for the name - well, I was an unashamed metaller back in those days, and the trendy guys - who wore baseball caps and big white trainers were known as "Kev"s - so there it was: he was called Kev because he is a Kev!

Kev's World is only a demo and I'm desperate to play the full release.

Did either game live up to your expectations?

Both games blew me away - again, Curse by virtue of being first, and Kev's due to that letter I mentioned before. Plus the fact they made a few hundred quid between them - given that I had just started at university when I released Curse, extra cash was an amazing bonus. But the big thing was that both games got reviewed in both ST Format and Atari ST user - I never saw that one coming!


What happened to game no.3??

"Odyssey Island" was the working title of the third Kev game, and it was going to be bigger than Curse, with more complicated puzzle elements, impromptu boss battles, other characters to interact with, and a weapon system based on earth/air/fire/water elements, that also fed into the puzzle system. But by this time, it was 1995, and not only was I deep into my university course, but I had also been very ill, and everything seemed to be heading towards the PC and 3D, so it just stalled in the end.

The Curse Of Bolda is perfect using a 16Mhz computer to give STOS that little extra help!

Why STOS?

Because it came with the Discovery pack, and was better than SEUCK - or indeed anything Paul or I had used until then. Of course, we started using extensions - Curse owes its very existence to The Missing Link, and towards the end, we also learned how to use little assembly language snippets to improve performance, but STOS was the backbone of what we did.


What was it like working with Floppyshop?

Floppyshop and their "floppyware" scheme was a great experience - Steve (Delaney) was great to work with and full of enthusiasm, despite some teething issues with corrupted disks! He gave both games a great write-up in the catalogues - if memory serves, he said that Curse was "better than a lot of the £25 off-the-shelf titles" of the time! Looking back, licenceware worked well for both titles.

The Curse Of Bolda is a massive game to tax your brain and reactions.

Why so little love for the Atari STe?

The STE version of Curse does actually use the DAC to play samples (hence why the STFM version is music only). As for the scrolling, we did not really understand enough about the guts of the STe to be able to do much (we were working largely in STOS and its extensions. Looking back, maybe we depended on that too heavily).

Secondly, from what we could tell of the market by looking at other games released, magazine coverage etc., it felt like the vast majority of ST owners had STFMs, so we coded to accommodate the widest possible base. Heck, Kev's World was cut down for half-meg STs - although we did do a 1meg version with extra sound effects!

Would you upgrade either game with more STe support?

I must admit - much to my shame - that since Odyssey Island stalled in '95, I haven't really thought about developing for the ST/STE. "Real life" got in the way too much - first university, then getting a job and a flat, and various other life events. In fact, I pretty much dropped out of game writing altogether from then right through to 2005 due to lack of time, money, hardware etc...

The Curse Of Bolda is cruel. Flipping a switch caused a fire and the platforms evaporated!

What are your favourite Atari ST games?

Back in the day, I was a huge platformer fan (as my own games may indicate!) - I loved Turrican 1 & 2, Rainbow Islands will always have a special place in my heart, titles like Ozone and Prehistorik that showed just what was possible with STOS... but my all-time number one has to be "The Killing Gameshow" by Psygnosis - now if ever there was a title that deserved an STE version it was that, for the music alone!


What are you and Ledasoft doing today?

These days, I am usually playing "being a Dad"! To be honest, I'm really not into playing games as I don't have the time to dedicate to the mainstream mega-titles, and the "indie" scene is just so full of shovelware it takes too long to even look for something to play! To be honest, these days I prefer to spend my time making games than playing them... which brings us neatly onto:

LedaSoft has undergone two major re-inventions since the ST days - the first was back in 2010 when we resurrected the "Leda" name as "Leda Entertainment" in an attempt to break into the mobile game market. We released about a dozen games over five or so years, but it really didn't work out.

More recently, we have changed direction again - this time we have kept the Leda Entertainment name, but changed what we are all about. Over our time in mobile, we met a lot of people trying to get into the games industry but always stuck behind the "lack of experience/no published titles" wall. So we changed direction - Leda is still firstly about us enjoying making games, but instead of hoping to make money, we have teamed up with a number of these talented artists and audio designers in the hope that the game we make and release together will help at least one of them on their way to their dream job!

The game we are working on is called "Bullion - The Curse of the Cutthroat Cattle" - it's a local multiplayer brawler based around a crew of pirate bulls. There are currently eight in the team, including Paul and myself, so Leda has grown a bit since the ST days! If you want to check out Bullion, go to www.bulliongame.com

So the plan for the future is to keep making games and, hopefully, help some people kick-start their career - ultimately to have fun! That said, I must admit that it's tempting to crack out the Atari STe once Bullion is done, just to see what I can still do - and I also have a half-finished PC remake of Curse somewhere I might finish up...