Producer: Players
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Andrew and Martin Severn

In a far distant solar system there lies a small planet, with a death entente hanging high above it in the skies. Once a thriving mining community, Anfractuos now orbits an unstable sun that is soon to explode. All humans have been evacuated, and the mines left to decay and fill with water.

In the mad race to leave this doomed world, a mining droid called Tobor has been left behind to fend for itself. If it's ever to escape, the droid must board the planet's last remaining shuttle and blast off into space. The main problem is that the shuttle is without rocket fuel, and therefore eight cans of that precious liquid must be found and collected before he can leave. So, with the instinct for survival flowing strongly through his circuitry, the droid sets off into the depths of the mining world to begin his search.

Anfractuos mining base is made up of a series of multi-level tunnels connected by lifts and shafts. The droid jets up or floats down shafts, but must take care when using lifts - some are unreliable due to lack of maintenance, whilst others have no lower exit.

Tobor may be without human companionship, but he is certainly not alone. Creatures made up of negative energy particles live on Anfractuos, and they are as unfriendly as they are unusual. Contact with these causes Tobor's limited energy reserves to be drained. To protect itself Tobor can attempt to avoid them, or shoot and kill the creatures, but as they are a protected species points are deducted for their destruction. Should Tobor's energy levels fall low, he becomes unable to jet upwards, and one of his four lives is lost if they fall to zero.

Whilst the droid can lose energy he can also replenish it. There are energy cubicles dotted about the planet, and by entering one Tabor's energy is rejuvenated. Points are awarded for the number of remaining droids and the extent of energy reserves at the end of the game.

Even if Tobor manages to collect the eight fuel cans, maintain his energy level and make his way to the shuttle launch zone, his task is still not complete. When the shuttle has been re-fuelled it is almost ready for blast-off, but first the four switches that retain it must be found and put out of commission. The shuttle's countdown then commences, and there is now limited time for the droid to enter the shuttle and blast off. If Tobor is not fast enough the shuttle takes off without him, leaving the poor little droid to end his days in the heat and horror of a supernova.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/W left/right, D for jet, I for fire
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2
Use of colour: lots of background colours
Graphics: particularly attractive characters, although fairly small
Sound: lots of spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: one vast map

I've got the feeling that the programmers treated Anfractuos like a demo rather than a game - it certainly looks like one, there's a scrolling message, and raster lines have been shoved in at every possible opportunity. The gameplay suffers severely, probably due to very little or no play-testing. The action is marred by the constant threat of the game resetting, and parts of the map are decidedly dodgy. If you're a masochistic games player or you want to see your Spectrum doing something pretty then perhaps this is worth a couple of pounds - but I wouldn't really recommend it.
BEN

Anfractuos is a strange piece of budget software, and it would probably have been quite good if there wasn't so many seemingly impossible locations. The individual characters are well drawn, but it's strange that the aliens don't have any collision detection, and very odd when they go back and forth through borders which you aren't allowed to cross. Perhaps PLAYERS' next game will establish them in the budget market but so far I've seen nothing of quality from them. Anfractuos is bare and unaddictive, and soon becomes quite boring.
PAUL

As if there weren't enough budget arcade adventures on the market already, PLAYERS had to go and add another one to our already expansive collection - and unfortunately for them, Anfractuos is one contribution I can certainly do without. It's playable enough for the first few minutes, but that's when the lack of addictiveness starts to pull at your nerves - and having to abort because you get stuck is one of the most frustrating glitches that any game can incorporate, and it' happens plenty of times here. PLAYERS have got a pretty poor sort of game on their hands here, and I wouldn't recommend it - even for a couple of quid.
MIKE

Players
£1.99

Players has chosen to saddle its latest game with this unpronouncable and rather forgettable name. It's a pity, because the game is anything but forgettable.

Anfractuos is an old-fashioned arcade-adventure in the Dynamite Dan mould. With your little robot, you float about the screen, avoiding the meanies moving through a surprisingly tricky maze of tunnels. You're stuck in an abandoned mine on the planetoid Anfractuos, and to escape you must collect eight fuel cans which'll enable your shuttle to blast to safety. The cans are hidden randomly, and usually in the most inaccessible little crannies.

Confusing the issue are various one-way lifts which often lead to dead ends, leaving you with no choice but to abort. You have four lives, but there are power points around the place to pep you up, although naturally they too seem to be in the most awkward of places.

Still, that's part of the challenge of the arcade-adventure - sorting out where to go, and remembering once you've worked it out. Once you've found your eight fuel cans, you must disable four switches scattered about the place, and then it's a race against time to get back to your shuttle and lift off to safety.

It's a good little game, even if some of the coding seems a little rushed at times. But I like it, and if you remember 1984, you might like it too!

Label: Players
Author: Andy and Martin Severn
Price: £1.99
Joystick: Kempston
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: John Gilbert

Deep space destruction on a budget scale. Sounds promising if you're a fan of maze games but if you're also a big budget buyer be warned, Anfractuous is a mish-mash of plot ideas, maze graphic techniques and uninspiring alien blobs.

You are a robot with very short legs - and a very small brain - who's run out of fuel and had to dump his space ship on an unexploded planet called Anfractuous. The spaceship, an Apollo lunar lander no doubt taken from the NASA scrap yard, needs eight cans of fuel, which you've got to find before the aliens take your four lives.

There's a big problem. You get to some of the game's screen's through one-way suction tunnels. Once you're through you can't escape. So, even if you go right and enter the spaceship screen you will be unable to escape, unless you've got the fuel cannisters to launch the craft.

There's more. You're a danger to yourself because your laser shoots out through your back. If the blasts don't hit an alien they'll bounce back at you off the maze walls and blast some of your life energy away.

You have just over 25 minutes to find the eight energy cannisters but the aliens' strength usually ensures that you'll never survive that long. Luckily the Severn brothers - the programmers - have included a couple of energy energising machines. They're few and far between so map the game and take note of each machine's position. Sound's tedious, and indeed it is.

Anfractuous resembles the NASA lander which is at its core. It's a piece of space dross with pretensions to originality.

There's a bundle of them out there already and this one's not going to make my advances.