Producer: Scorpio Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £1.99
Language: Machine code
Author: Andrew Reed

In a way Decor Wreckers resembles Terminal's Carpet Capers, except that it's infinitely cheaper and more playable. As in Carpet Capers you have to cover something while nuisances are undoing your good work.

Basically Decor Wreckers is a 'Painter' type game. You play the part of a paint roller (makes a change from fighting paint rollers off). The screen is blue, you must paint it yellow, all of it. The trouble is that there are various insects and creatures, Sid Spider (who else!), Freddie Fly, Bertie Bugg and Sammy Snail, all of whom crawl or fly about wiping off the paint. The object of this very simple game is to get the screen all painted and get your roller 'home' in the bottom right hand corner before any nasty can damage the paintwork.

Succeeding in this mission will promote you to the next screen where there are more nasties at work. Unfortunately you only have a limited amount of paint per roll. Running out of apt is tantamount to losing a life.

COMMENTS

Control keys: good, Q/A up/ down, O/P left/right
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive and fast - there's also a neat touch that the roller can cover a full width of the roller or a half width which forces your reactions to be more efficient
Use of colour: fair to good, very straightforward
Graphics: simple, but reasonably detailed and fairly smooth moving
Sound: fair
Skill levels: 1 but gets harder with each screen
Lives: 3 fills of paint
Originality: not very as based on 'Painter' type game, but a reasonably novel approach

The keys are responsive and the sound is fair, but it could all be better, and the graphics are a bit jumpy. After about an hour's play I started to get really bored with this game because there is so little variation.

Bad memories came to mind when this one turned up - mainly Carpet Capers. The extra low price didn't help in convincing myself that it may be good. Decor Wreckers, however, is quite high quality for the price! Keyboard response is very good and it needs to be because the pace of the game is quite fast. Painting the screen is fun at first with the interlopers to interfere with your handywork. As the game progresses more things spoil the paint and the game rapidly becomes unplayable. Colour and sound have been quite well used and in all it makes a good game at the price with plenty of frantic action.

The graphics and movement are neat and fast, also reasonably smooth. Decor Wreckers was great fun to play - for about fifteen minutes or so. And that's the central problem. The concept is so very simple that it can't possibly hope to hold anyone's interest for very long. It's really a very early Spectrum type game with improved graphics. However, at its price it may well appeal, though whether you'll feel its low price is worth it for the simplicity you get it another matter.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
CONTROL: Keys, Kemp
FROM: Scorpio Software, £1.99

No painting the town red in this game, just the screen yellow as your roller tries to fill in the display.

With a diminishing paint supply, a falling bonus and bothersome bugs, you are up against it. But there's not much of interest in what is an inferior version of an old game.