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Alive 12
Indigo
                                                                                
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                        A Jump'n'Run by Stephane Belin
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        Well, what to say, it feels a bit strange atm, to write down 
        some lines for a diskmag again, especially not having a running 
        Atari machine build up, but since I leeched INDIGO lately from 
        DHS, I came back into the mood to make the things again I did so 
        often in the past, reviews, harhar...

        Anyway, I was quite surprised about the screenshots and the
        short info about that game on the DHS board, as it reminded me
        somehow to "Magic Pockets" and "Gods" a little bit, famous
        releases by the Bitmap Brothers and the info that the game was
        done to be published by Psygnosis, made me anxious to check it
        out as it gives the impression to be of some better quality
        then... so will it be a real cute xmas present for the Atarians 
        then?!

        There isn't much of a story in here, a usual jump'n'run game,
        conquer the levels, try to avoid contact with the badies,
        collect things and search the exit, things you did in hundred
        games before. So where is the trick then? INDIGO comes along
        with quite nice styled grafix, cute animated badies and hero,
        good looking level and background grafix (even though that they
        remind in parts a bit to its obviously idols by the Bitmap
        Brothers) and neat chip musix. It uses some kind of raster stuff
        for the background colors. The controls are realised good and 
        easy, there are goodies to collect like extra-lifes and
        smartbombs... To leave a level you need to collect a special
        number of keys displayed on the screen in a special time limit.
        Some keys are laying around in the levels, other you get only by
        killing some of your enemies. This goes through a jumping attack
        onto their heads, using smartbombs or the possibility to shot
        rugby balls in later levels. If the stage is cleared (if you can
        call it so), you just have to find the exit to go on.

        So far so good... but after all those good points a few bad ones 
        have to be added too, such as the simple and awful chip fx 
        (poing, meup, blip), the unfairness to die by the smallest 
        contact with your enemies (especially if your jumping attack
        didn't work out correctly), the too static background grafix (a
        static waterfall doesn't looks like one) and the fact that you
        can't clear the levels really. Some badies don't react on your
        jumping attack (such as the mad cars in level one) or appearing
        in "cleared" parts of the levels again. Later level designs seem
        to be very fast very tricky, but that's surely a matter of taste
        and your skills in playing jump'n'run games.

        So what at all?! Just let it make short: INDIGO isn't a real 
        killer game, but without any question one of the better digged
        out so far never released antics we saw over the last years and
        some kind of fresh food for the joystick sportmen around, as
        releases of this game genre are quite seldom nowadays on Atari.
        It features a cool set of grafix, very nice chipmusix (and the
        best, those were never used before and done for the game
        itself!) and a quite easy gameplay. Unfortunately it missed a
        bit some very own taste and touch, that would push it much
        higher in the scores, but anyway, any jump'n'run lover and
        gambler using an Atari ST nowadays should grab and play it, as
        it is worth a try!

        Scores
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        Pixels/Design ...  8o% ... cute drawn, partly nice animated, 
                                   rastered backgrounds
        Musix/FX ........  7o% ... very nice chip tunes, awfully 
                                   loosy special fx
        Playability .....  9o% ... except for the strange jump attack 
                                   very easy to play
        Motivation ......  85% ... different level designs pushing
                                   you further...
        ---------------------------------------------------------------
        Overall Score ...  81% ... well, just grab and play it!
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                                    moondog of .tSCc. for Alive, 12/2oo5
Alive 12