Producer: Players
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Colin Swinbourne

The deviants, a semi-human race left over from Earth's early occupation of a distant world, have stirred their angry bones. They start changing their asteroid home into a massive astral battle station and look to other worlds to conquer.

A crack squad of Starwarriors was sent to ensure that the deviant's plans are thwarted - but you are all that remain of that once bold band, and your last task is to prime the mechanisms of the 30 nuclear weapons that you fellow fighters have laid.

Moving from platform to platform, you run and jump your way past the deviants who patrol their base, visiting a recharging station when too much fighting has exhausted you. (You can also replenish your blaster's ammunition on some levels.)

Teleports at strategic points provide fast access to other sections of the asteroid base. But combat years ago has damaged them, so they're unreliable.

When contact is finally made with an unprogrammed nuclear device, six activator valves appear onscreen. To prime one of these bombs, every valve must be closed with six corresponding keys. The task is complicated, however, by the fact that the valves are interlinked - close one and another may open. And a countdown shows how many seconds remain before the bomb self-destructs.

Programmer Colin Swinbourne's Joe Blade (also from Players) was found very playable and addictive a few months ago, earning 84% in Issue 44. The world loved it, too, and it sat at the top of the sales charts for more than a month.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston,
Sinclair
Graphics: good
Sound: good tune and effects

Having to shoot these deviants more than once gets annoying, and their superior agility cramps your movement on every screen. And there's no information on how to set the bombs, which makes the game very short and pointless till you've found out how to do it. Dark atmospheric, graphics are the only good point.
BYM [67%]

I've been eagerly awaiting the next game from the programmer of Joe Blade - but I'm disappointed by Deviants. It's a pity Colin Swinbourne didn't try something a bit more adventurous than an extension of Virgin Games's Dan Dare, and Deviants has too many features of Joe Blade as well. The play area is very large and the graphics are many and varied, but still the game is disappointing.
PAUL [65%]

Players
£1.99
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald

Roll up, roll up! It's flick screen budget platform game time! Run around the alien battlestar. Shoot the aliens. Run around the battlestar a bit more. Prime a number of bombs. Make an origami paper hat (eh???).

The blurb says: "As the last star-warrior, you must complete the mission and uphold the honour of your fallen comrades." if this was a crappy game, I could have been incredibly waggish and said 'I'd rather have played one of the fallen comrades" Unfortunately the game isn't crappy, so I can't.

Deviants is pretty easy to describe, in fact I've already described it; you shoot aliens and prime bombs. This bomb-priming bit is quite tricky (or it is if you're as mind numbingly thick as I am), because you have to complete a little logic 'prob' within a time limit. Fail and you die. I just kept dying; my highest priming rate was a pitiful two bombs, and that was blind luck (literally - I had my eyes shut). Anyway, onto the 'look' of the game.

Question: What separates a good platform game from a dud platform game?

Answer. Crikey, I wouldn't send you out to buy a pound of sausages. (Whoops, wrong answer).

Proper Answer: Quite simple really; graphics, animation, colour, sound, playability and price. (Same as any other type of game. Haw Haw.)

Deviants scores well. It gets a tick for each of the above (quite a big one, actually). Nicely coloured bold sprites move smoothly over an attractive playing area with absolutely no attribute clash (a bit Dan-Dareish actually). There's yer extra bullets and yer extra energy to pick up and also a 128K tune (on the menu screen, anyway). All in all the game is very... erm, what's the word? Slick!! Yes, that'll do - it's very Slick. There's another word for it as well. Uuum - aah yes: Cheap! Deviants is Slick and also Cheap. And well worth the spondies, too. Boing!!

Label: Players
Author: Colin Swinbourne
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Isn't it amazing. Here we are in 3162 years time leaving Earth to find another home, and where are we going? The planet Krauze that's where. Great. Krauze is not so dull as it sounds enough being loaded with mysterious artefacts telling us all about an evil race of Deviants that lived on Krauze in the dim past.

Guess what? The Deviants want their planet back and have returned with a giant battle station...

You are a Starwarrior, and quite a well defined one at that. You run between the flipping screens and prime all the bombs, no mean feat, I promise you. The bombs are positioned in arch-like things which, if not primed, won't let you through. In all locations are a couple of these little green aliens, which, when they touch you, sap your energy. Scattered round the place are all manner of little bibs and bobs to help you. There are spare bullets on the floor, a la Dan Dare, and also these little cubicles which, replenish your energy.

The graphics are wicked, background, fore grounds, everything. All of the graphics are good. The backgrounds are made up of pipes and metallic looking platforms, which really add to the mood of the game. The graphics for the sprites are beautifully detailed. The main sprite has a face, for example, and the aliens look very familiar. I wouldn't be surprised if Ripley turned up somewhere...

Up to this point, the game has been really simple, but now it's time the hard part in the game showed it's face. The priming of the bombs is very hard, I tell you. You are shown a row of 6 valves, which are either open (glowing and oscillating) or closed (dull and oscillating.) Using the keys 1 to 6 you have to get all the valves open, a la V. You know, key 1 changes valves 1 and 4 etc. What makes it really hard is that you have a very short time limit to do your stuff, and the chances of getting the night combination of keys seems like one in a thousand.

Still, I like a challenge.