Producer: Fantasy
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.50
Language: Machine code
Author: Bob Hamilton

Doomsday Castle is the sequel to The Pyramid. Often follow-ups lack the flair of the original, but in this case the same excellent graphics have been used and added to. The scenario has also been enormously expanded, and the cassette is accompanied by a long, highly amusing and informative inlay of instructions which clearly explain the various roles of the 5 different alien creatures you will encounter, the layout of the castle halls and passageways.

It's a long scenario, but in brief, it seems that the Elves, ever hopeless at keeping their magic rings and crystals, have allowed the infinitely evil Scarthax to house 6 large elfin stones in Doomsday Castle, where their dangerous power can be harnessed for his own nasty ends. Super hero Ziggy has been sent in to find the stones and escape with them. Some hope! Each chamber is filled with Urks, Garthrogs, a Googly Bird, Nucleoids and Orphacs. Ziggy, in his by now familiar defence capsule, has to laser Urks to death to keep up his laser power, which he needs to blast away one of the four red exit doors. Most of the time these doors are protected by the Garthrogs, who sail up and down on lifts, shooting blindly at anything. Only when a Garthrog is 'up' can Ziggy get in a shot at a door. When the door is sufficiently destroyed, Ziggy will be sucked through. Each chamber has an anteroom which may contain a crystal or one of the 6 ancient stones. Only these 6 give you scoring points, which are being eaten away the longer you remain in the castle. High scores are coded and may be sent to Fantasy for publishing in their list of top 1000 scores every 6 months.

COMMENTS

Control keys: 3 options - see review for The Pyramid
Joystick: Fuller, Kempston, AGF, Protek, Mikrogen
Keyboard play: very responsive - Ziggy floats downwards under his own steam, so you have to work hard at this one
Use of colour: excellent
Graphics: excellent
Sound: good
Lives: 1
Screens: 25 halls, 49 passages

What makes this game fun to play, is the complex relationship between all the creatures. Googly Birds only want to sleep, for instance, but Urks keep trying to wake them up and make them fly about, so it becomes as important to shoot Urks to prevent this happening as it does to shoot them for laser replenishment. Added to that, there are numerous routes through the castle but not all are as useful as others, so there as an adventure and strategy element thrown in. Mind you, coping with the furiously fast arcade element is quite enough for me!

The graphics are excellent, smooth, detailed, animated and amusing. Not only must you survive in a hall, shoot out the door, get the crystal and move on, but you get shut in a passage with a time-locked door, where you must survive for as long as possible against the Orphacs before being released into another hall to do battle again. A great follow up to The Pyramid, and another challenge to Ultimate's great game name. All I can say is BUY IT!

Fantasy certainly seem determined to drive people nuts with immensely long games at impossible odds. Not that this is unplayable, quite the opposite, it's great fun, with good graphics and good sound. To offer any real criticism one would have to play for months! Excellent value.

A graphics adventure in the true sense of the word. You control a little man who zooms around the castle, collecting various objects, etc. It's similar in style to Atic Atac.

Stewart: The nasties are nicely designed, and their movement is delightfully smooth. Constant attention is demanded by the 'Urks' and 'Carthrogs' as they rush around the screen.

Peter: Here is a very colourful arcade game with an adventure-type aim. Very enjoyable and well worth a look.

Stephen: Quite a slow response to the player's directions, even when using a joystick. Otherwise, I liked it.

DON'T GET MAD, GET EVEN!

Zippy is my tip to become the next superstar of computer games. His name will soon be up there in lights alongside the other greats like Miner Willy and Hungry Horace.

Many of you will already have encountered Zippy in his first game - The Pyramid. Following the success of The Pyramid, Fantasy Software have rushed out a sequel with no apparent concern at typecasting their new protege.

Doomsday Castle follows the now familiar pattern of the arcade-style adventure game. You have to negotiate our hero through no less than 75 interconnecting halls and labyrinths, dodging the nasties and collecting six precious stones en route.

Doomsday Castle is proof that Ultimate do not have a monopoly on pretty smooth scrolling graphics. This is the prettiest game I've seen since Pssst!

It's addictive to the point of frustration and I for one am determined to get even with that darned Scarthax one of these days.

Available now at £5.95 from most good software shops.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
JOYSTICK: Any, Optional
CATEGORY: Arcade
SUPPLIER: Fantasy
PRICE: £6.50

This is a direct follow-up to Pyramid, an excellent game in which you had to battle through a long succession of rooms each containing different aliens.

Doomsday Castle features the same hero Ziggy complete with his trusty shielded space module. And once again you have to make your way through many rooms and passages on a quest of daunting complexity.

You're searching for six ancient stones which you need to escape from the castle. They're located somewhere in a huge labyrinth of 25 halls and 49 passages.

It would literally take hours to work your way right through the castle because you have to shoot your way out of each hall in a complicated way which requires destroying huge numbers of alien Urks as well.

But will you have the tenacity to keep at it? Unlike Pyramid, this game is not particularly compelling, because although there are plenty of different types of Urk, the action in each hall is basically the same.

But I must admit that the climax, if anyone ever gets there, sounds pretty exciting. Apparently anyone finding and entering the exit chamber with all six stones would spark off a chain reaction which leaves him just a few seconds to escape.

But I'm not prepared to invest several months in nondescript action for the sake of a few seconds thrill.

To be honest it was the unusual box that attracted me to Fantasy Software's Doomsday Castle more than anything else (it looks more like a book than the customary cassette box that I am used to). One advantage of this feature is that it allows the use of a removable instruction sheet which is easier to glance at than an inlay card. The literature enclosed, although long, is both thorough and witty and worth reading. However, I am glad that the oddity of the wrapping of am glad that the oddity of the wrapping of this game persuaded me to part with my £6.50 asit is one of the best games I've seen in a long time.

The villain of this piece is the infinitely evil Scarthax who has found six ancient magic stones which enable him to control the universe. He has imprisoned them in Doomsday Castle but has placed them in separate rooms because if all six are brought together there will be a chain reaction causing instant animation.

The villain of this piece is the infinitely evil Scarthax who has found six ancient magic stones which enable him to control the universe. He has imprisoned them in Doomsday Castle but has placed them in separate rooms because if all six are brought together there will be a chain reaction causing instant annihilation.

The program loads in 3 minutes 35 seconds and confronts you with a menu of controls, there are seven to choose from: the Fuller, Kempston, Sinclair and Cursor joysticks or a choice of three keyboard layouts. Although the latter is a good idea, user-definable keys would have been better.

You control the hero, Ziggy, who flies about in an exploratory Capsule armed only with a Mini Missile Launcher, with which he can destroy Urks, Neucloids, Orphacs and doors. However after sixteen door-shots your MML will run out of Theta Radiation which gives sufficient power to destroy and in order to recharge you must kill eight Urks, absorbing their radiation. At the bottom of the screen is shown your shield power. This commences at 1000 and gradually decreases as you collide with and are shot by the various inhabitants of the castle (when this reaches zero Ziggy will shortly die).

Doomsday Castle consists of twenty five halls and 49 connecting passages. Each hall contains four doors, two lifts (which you cannot use) and an antechamber. One of the doors you will already have come through and so will not be able to use it again (when this occurs the door is coloured blue). The only way to get through the exit doors which are coloured red, is by blasting them away; this is quite an involved process! The Antechamber stands at the bottom and contains either a crystal or an Ancient Stone. A crystal will increase your Shield Power whilst the stones will add to your score. On top of the Antechamber sits a Googly Bird, one of which inhabits every hall. Its main aim in life is to sleep but if woken it will fly up to the ceiling and unleash a thread which will greatly sap your shield power. The only way the above bird can be woken is if an Urk falls on its head: you must therefore prevent them doing this.

As you explore the castle you will find that Urks are the commonest form of life there; they take over fifty different forms (one type in each room). Urks will atomize should they come into contact with absolutely anything. However, they will drain your shield power.

A Garthog sits on each lift firing indiscriminately across the hall. They constantly grin except when shooting them, when they bear an amusing frown.

Should you manage to shoot your way out of a hall you will be sucked along a narrow corridor where the name of the hall you have just left, your score, the high score, the stones collected and your shield power are displayed. You are then plummetted into a larger passage where you are locked in with Neucloids, Orphacs and, of course, Urks. Neucloids are very primitive, single-cell creatures which multiply at an alarming rate and are very difficult to destroy. Orphacs are programmed robots which will bounce off the walls until they hit you. There are two doors in the passage, one of which you will just have come through and the other through which you must exit. However, unlike in the halls the exit is operated by a time lock so you must wait until it opens, avoiding the alien wildlife and losing as little shield power as possible.

At the end of each game your score is shown together with a code and if you wish you can send both of these into Fantasy and they may be published in one of the two high score tables published annually. One small point, in this game points are acquired by the number of Ancient Stones gained and not by the number of aliens killed: interesting.

Doomsday Castle is available for the 48K Spectrum from Fantasy Software. Its superb graphics, sound and absorbing playability make it well worth £6.50. I highly recommend you to buy it.