Reviews

Here he is, the author making his best benign smile on the loading screen, holding up the very Spectrum that has been his continual passion for 30 years, wondering, like a bemused Pirandello, if the sprites rattling around inside that rubbery box would allow him to morph from player to creator...
Lost in My Spectrum (LIMS) is a love letter of a game, so much so that playing it feels a bit like trespassing in the author's imagination. That was once a quality in Manic Miner, the inspiration for so many pixel precise platformers, you had to embrace Matthew Smith's weird world to get through the caverns of his mind.
For this author, the miracle of Jonathan Cauldwell's Arcade Game Designer has allowed him scope to enter the great canon of Spectrum games as creator for the first time. Getting across that line has been a long time coming, and more games have since followed. As a player, realising this, you want this first game to be an unqualified success.
And for some it will be just that, plenty of really unforgiving single screens of pixel exactitude to leap around, and an attention to presentation – especially sprite detail – that show a lot of care has been put in.
I have been a passable enough player to defeat a few challenging platformers in my time; in Manic Miner the thrill comes when a puzzling screen clicks into place and you can then flow through it. What started out as a series of fussy jump line ups becomes a scoot through – remember the floor collapsing behind you in the Menagerie?
As it probably should expect to, LIMS suffers by comparison. The challenging screens never really unravel and roll over so that the same problems can get you again and again after you had thought them solved. Only one screen of the dozen or so I reached, taking MM's old foe Eugene for inspiration, really hits the mark.
Part of the problem is this version of AGD, I think. Its collision detection is hard to second guess sometimes making many deaths feel unfair. Partly it is the author's taught timer. Bar Solar Panel Generator, the timer (air supply) in MM's caverns is there to keep you moving, but rarely used to suffocate. Here, stopping to check out the scenery for a second from a lofty platform is a crime that will certainly be punished by death.

Misc Positives
Much imagination in the screen designs – conveyors and up arrows are put to good use. Colours are very well used and varied.

Misc Negatives
Bar the pernickety difficulty, the biggie for me comes at screen 6 where the author indulges his passion for Mondrian with a screen that masks all of the platforms. Rather than embracing this challenge, after many attempts and even resorting to 'infinite lives' I felt conned and gave up with it, had to get a Spec-chum to put me back into the game on screen 7.

Verdict
A colourful outpouring of Spectrum love from an estimable contributor to the Spectrum scene, marred by badly flawed level design.
An updated version is apparently a prospect (I'm writing this in June 2013). 2.6/5