H2O
by EKO
[ http://eko.planet-d.net/ ]
Ok, here's an old joke we pulled on our chemistry teacher back
in high school. Just before he came into class wrote H2O+ on the
blackboard (the vertical line of the plus a bit longer than the
horizontal). When the teacher came in looked at it and said:
"Who wrote that? That compound does not exist!". "Oh yes it
does!" we said. "That's impossible, he said. Water is a valid
compound; it can't be missing an electron". "That's not just
water," we replied again, "it's holy water!". Dunno why I wrote
this, but it popped to my mind the minute I agreed to do this
review :)
Anyway, a little history concerning this game: It was supposed
to be released a long, long, long, long, long time ago (10+
years) but for unknown reasons (commercial deals that didn't get
them anywhere?) the game was held back. What's weird though is
that I somehow managed to get the PC port of this game about six
years ago, and it had copyright date of 1996! So, the minute I
heard that the game would be released I was puzzled, because I
thought it had been (remember that I got my first falcon only
last year!).
The game
So, after such a long time we have the game ready to run in our
Falcons. Yay! So, let's go on with the game. I can't think of
any category this game could fit in, the closest relative of it
being Lemmings. The goal of the game can be described like this:
On each level you are presented with a landscape and one or more
taps (usually located at the top of the screen. From each tap
water starts falling down. It's your duty to channel the water
in order to go to deposits and not let it get trapped in
isolated places.
You control a man that has the ability to fly around the
landscape. To achieve this goal you can use bombs, which allow
you to blast a small portion of the landscape to suit your
needs. You also have a limited amount of small blocks which you
can use to make bridges or ladders.
Since you are working against the clock a timer is ticking on
every screen. Thus finding a solution doesn't just involve
finding a path. Finding an optimal solution is required as early
as level 1! Also, you have some seeds which, when planted, will
grow a tree. Finally, there is a lower threshold on each screen
on the amount of water you need to store, so that adds to the
challenge.
Now you have a brief description of the game. Let's see now how
all this is implemented in your Falcon. The game runs fine on a
Falcon030 with VGA and I suspect RGB would pose no problem too.
Each level is unique (i.e. it's not plotted from blocks or
anything like that), rendered in 640x480x256 colours if I'm
correct. In fact the backdrops are pretty lovely, although
fiendishly designed to present a challenge. A nice feature is
the levels aren't more than 480 pixels high and vertical
hardware scrolling is used to scroll them up and down.
The game is joystick controlled and although the controls are a
bit quirky for my taste (sometimes I kept forgetting the
combinations needed for each "weapon"). Anyway, soon I got
adjusted to them. Each level poses a formidable challenge and it
requires lots of forward thinking to get it right. Also, the
level of difficulty is raised by the fact that only a small
portion of the level is being displayed, so when you think you
have a good solution figured out you might forget what lays
underneath.
A password system is used to give the player the possibility to
restart the game at a higher level, which is fortunate enough,
because playing one or two levels in a row gives a big headache!
It wouldn't hurt to use a save game though (level passwords are
soooo outdated nowadays - then again the game is 10 years old :)
Overall
Being a real-time game by nature (after a few seconds after the
start of each level, the water starts flowing and there's no way
of stopping it!) this game isn't suited for everyone, but those
who will persist will find a good challenge.
The whole game is executed very nice. I could only find two
minor annoyances in it. The first one is, as I said above, the
quirky password system. The other one is the complete lack of
two player support. Doing a vertical or horizontal split screen
and allowing two players to play at the same time the same level
would be a killer addition. Also, this would give a couple of
extra modes of play (co-op, competitive).
Still, with all these minor whines aside, it's a great game out
of the ordinary that will fill your idle hours quite nicely. I
really recommend you to try it.
GGN/KUA for Alive, re-written 2006-07-30
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