Very good version of the puzzle game where you move atoms around a board in order to construct a variety of organic molecules. This task would be easy were it not for the fact when an atom is moved, it carries on moving in the same direction until an obstacle is encountered at which point it stops. There are a whole class of puzzle games exhibiting this behaviour and they range from reasonably easy to really quite difficult.
Atomix has the additional educational benefit in that it allows the player to brush up on basic structure of organic molecules, ooh what fun! The game starts off with the primitive water and methane molecules, but soon gets onto slightly more tricky ones such as our perennial friend ethanol.
The official "Grandslam" then "US Gold" UK ZX Spectrum releases of this game apparently never saw the light of day in 1990, as speccy releases in the UK were certainly in decline at that time, as magazine articles of the time will attest to. However, things were really happening in Central Europe at that point so we instead have this now freeware version in Czech from Slovakian outfit Ultrasoft.
This version has the hallmark features we have become accustomed to in many releases from Central & Eastern Europe. There's the bouncy AY music on the intro screen in this otherwise 48K mode game. Also, we have an in-game text scroller in Czech which emits occasionally a few English words when you are least expecting it.
In-game keys are QAOP to move a "boney hand" cursor around the play area, whilst holding down M or fire allows dragging of an atom in any of the four directions. Naturally, joysticks are supported too. If you happened to skip chemistry classes then you can at any time press 'H' to show what the molecule in question should look like.
Certain things exist that can make levels tougher to play. For example there are obstacles which disintigrate after being hit by a certain number of atoms. A lot of difficulty in the game also comes from deciding where exactly on the board you should construct the molecule. You can be quite easily fooled. You may be able to get 7 out of 8 atoms say correctly constructed, but then realise that you can't get the final one in without moving the entire molecule to another place, because it wasn't in the right place to begin with.
It's a real mindbender at times and certainly quite a test of a certain skill. Sometimes, when you've learnt a bit more about the game dynamics, you'll instinctively know where to build a molecule, but may not be able to explain why it is right! Overall a very fun puzzler, with some considerable playing time in it.
I'm not sure how many levels this release has, but IIRC the Amiga version had 30 levels, so this one may be the same. I've only completed the first few so far. There's also a speccy sequel, Atomix II: Hexagonia, which looks to be indentical in gameplay, looking at the screenshot, but presumably containing more advanced levels.
I could quite easily award this game a 5, but just note a few minor things which I think could have been done differently or possibly improved. The letters on the atoms are not too easy on the eyes to read. Partly because of the choice of a white background colour (perhaps a dark colour would've been better here). Also because of choice of an unusual font and a shading on each atom, I probably would have used a more standard font and dispense with the shading, making the atoms look flat, but more legible. (Not unlike the C64 version looks). Second issue is that the AY music stops when the game starts. Maybe there is a key to re-activate the interrupt routine? But in game sound effects are pretty good and can presumably be heard more clearly without chip music playing. Still I would have liked a key available to toggle in-game sound FX & music on/off. Another minor issue is lack of time limit. Whilst I actually prefer playing the game much more without a time limit, it would be nice to have this as a menu-selectable option, since most other ports apparently implement a time limit. Apologies to the authors if these features do exist in the game. As I can't read the Czech language, it is quite possible I may have missed them.
I also personally prefer the discrete cursor control method used in "Deflektor" to this accelerating cursor method used here. This method may be faster and more efficient, but I just like to have the cursor locked into the same grid as the in-game elements.
Overall though, the above are only minor quibbles and do not take away from the fact that this is a very good and highly enjoyable speccy port of Atomix, which we would have otherwise been deprived of since the UK versions never made it out onto the shelves. Highly recommended for fans of the so-called "transport puzzle" genre.
