A simple 2D game where you pilot a helicopter in order to pick up sheep from a rapidly flooding field and drop them off at the top or bottom of the screen.
Or, at least I think that's what's happening. The game looks very much like it's written in BASIC with its character-based movement and UDG style graphics, except it's actually implemented in machine code and so zips along at a fast rate. Perhaps too fast.
Your helicopter seems to have about three seconds of fuel before it runs out and to make matters worse, the keyboard controls are not revealed in the game itself. This leaves the player rapidly dying several times before the combo is worked out.
I found that 5=right, 6=left, 7=down, 8=up seems to work, but that is neither a CURSOR arrangement nor a Sinclair joystick arrangement. The keys are for some reason swapped around in an awkward non-standard mapping.
Even when you do get the hang of flying the chopper and manage to avoid running out of fuel for a few seconds, the field floods so rapidly that the game is over within just a few further seconds anyway.
There are some interesting tougher levels available, featuring additional hazards such as fog, lightning and diseased sheep, but the thought of this game being made even more difficult than the first level is enough to dissuade me from seriously trying them out.
Of course it's entirely possible that it's just me, that I'm not very good at this game and others out there have mastered it, so try it out and see how long you can last without the game ending. You may well do better than me, with some perseverence.
The game does feature a superfluous stripey-border effect on the intro screen, thanks to use of machine code, but that doesn't make up for the fact that this is one poorly implemented title. Perhaps with some player feedback, the problems could have been fixed and the game made much better, after all I quite like the underlying premise.
