Phil king writes a game shock!?

Producer: CRL
Price of Success: £8.95
Author: Supa Nova

For all us who've dreamed of being the next Raf Cecco (?!), but don't know the difference between a Z80 processor and a sheep dip, CRL have this tempting little program. Included with it is an easily completed example game, requiring the main program for execution.

Basically, 2-D Game Maker is a utility to design arcade adventures. A row of icons allow you to change the design of the included game or just start from scratch, designing your own sprites, rooms and objects etc.

Both objects and the main character sprite can be redesigned. The latter also has eight stages of animation and so can be made to walk, or even fly. Sprites are designed by moving a cursor around a grid, representing an enlarged version of the four-character block sprites. Once designed, objects can be placed in any screen, using a simple menu system. In the game proper, objects can be picked up, dropped and used to remove various walls and platforms to allow further progress.

Up to 64 different rooms may be mapped out, using their corresponding hexadecimal numbers. One must be designated to the starting screen (where the game will begin) while another must be the finishing screen (reaching this means completion of the game).

Other aspects which can be altered include scrolling text messages which accompany each screen, the path of the main character's jump and the various sound effects. Gravity and up/down controls can also be switched on/off.

But despite all these options, what you always end up with is essentially a very simplistic arcade adventure/platform game with no scope for anything very different. Although fun for a while, the designer just isn't flexible enough to enable the creation of original games and you always get the feeling that you're only making superficial alterations rather than really designing your own game.

PHIL ... 40%

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: simple sprites, but at least you can redesign them!
Sound: simple spot effects which can also be altered
Options: definable keys and too many others to mention!

While it takes a while to master, you can have great fun with this: fiddling around creating your own sprites, scrolling messages and loads more besides. Sprites, in particular, can be really hilarious. Unfortunately the 'designer' is perhaps more of a basic arcade/adventure with knobs to tweak various aspects. Actual playability is therefore on the weak side, but it still kept me happily occupied for a while.
MARK [58%]

CRL
£8.95 cass
Reviewer: David McCandless

Let's face it, I went wild when this package hit my doorstep, but so would anyone who's ever tried to get to grips with Melbourne House's 'cos anything's gotta be better than that for DIY game-making. Hasn't it? Well hasn't it??

Well, no! 2D Game Maker is definitely worse. It starts with a demo game with a fair number of screens being loaded along with the designer into the Spectrum. The graphics are of a reasonably high standard and the animation is very smooth. Unfortunately, it's all bad news from then on. The only thing that moves is your character, so the quality of animation isn't surprising and the scrolling messages are trite - even if they are a nice touch. Objects picked up once reappear next time you reach the screen, so at least you can build up reasonable scores.

The demo is the graphic adventure type where you have to pick up objects and use them in other rooms. You pick up the objects by accessing a menu using the 'Function' key. But the function appears to be 'Zap' 'cos all I ever managed to achieve was a complete crash. Also beware entering names for saving/loading your game designs (another bug in my book) since too long a name causes the program to crash back to Basic.

The default cursor keys are the familiar Q, A, O, P and M for 'fire'. Keys 1-5 are used in the object design screens, and allow some of the functions to work with a joystick.

But to add to the user-unfriendliness of the thing, the QUIT option of some menus is absent in others, so to get back to a previous level, you have to start from the beginning and work down again. In the screen design function, each time you want to place an object the menu comes up again - which makes for really slow screen design. All in all, there's a noticeable lack of continuity between the menus, how you get to them and what to do once you get there. At least the icons on the main menu bar are somewhat recognisable.

After a short while, it is soon apparent that the only games that can be created are ones very much like the demo - platforms or flat graphic adventures - so the possibilities are absolutely endless if repetition turns you on. The 'fire' key is entirely pointless as the only moving sprite is the controlled character, - so no shoot 'em ups.

And there you have it. A cumbersome, highly complicated utility for creating pretty but boring games. Avoid, avoid, a thousand times avoid.