Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: John Gibson, Steve Cain

In deep space time hangs heavy for the robo boys tending their herds of Cybernetically Operated Wagons (COWS). But their dull existence is enlivened by space creatures that attempt to upset their progress through a rectangular space zone.

You have control of a robo boy, who can only move in straight, unobstructed lines; the object is to progress from the bottom left of the playing area to the top right. The amount you can move is decided by the roll of two dice, giving vertical and horizontal components. (Diagonal moves are impossible.)

After the first moves have been made, aliens emerge from the top right-hand corner and take up random positions. (You can choose how many aliens there are, within limits.) if you move onto a square occupied by an alien you space them out, but incur penalty points - and after you've made your move, the aliens reposition themselves. If they box you in, you are spaced out and suffer more penalty points.

And you have just one minute to complete each turn. The slower you are the more penalty points you earn, and if your penalty score grows larger than your handicap score the game is lost.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston, Interface II
Use of colour: good backgrounds, but poor in playing area
Graphics: characters so small they're worthless
Sound: bleeps and blips
Skill levels: player can choose size of playing area and number of aliens
Screens: one playing area of variable size

Bleugh! Spaced Out isn't much fun. The graphics are tiny and far from attractive, and I didn't find a scrap of entertaining material. This game isn't even worth £1.99 - incredible, considering its two authors are ex-Denton Designs.
MIKE

When I first saw this game, I thought 'what the '!£%&'s going on here?'. Spaced Out is a weird strategy-type board game, and it takes a few plays to understand what's going on. The graphics on the gaming board are very basic, with fat, wobbling sprites chasing each other around the grid, though the backdrop and icon-choice panel are very pretty. But though it doesn't hold the interest for long, Spaced Out is quite playable.
MARK

This is easily the most original game I've seen in the last few issues. The concept is very strange, but fiendishly simple. It's reasonably presented, with a delightful background - though sadly there's only one. The main graphics of the play area are unimpressive and very small, but the animation is good. You can rely on Firebird to come out with something original once in a while.
PAUL

Firebird
£1.99

From time to time you come across a game which is so simple they couldn't charge more than £1.99 for it, but which you'll be playing a lot longer than many more spectacular offerings. Spaced Out is just such a budget classic, at least if you're into strategy.

It's the sort of game you feel you could play with pencil and paper if only you didn't need the computer to control your opponent. That's why the blurb rambles on about space cowboys playing this in their spare time on holographic screens.

Unluckily this poetic flight of fancy actually uses up valuable instructions space on the inlay card, with the result that until you've played the game, you're unlikely to understand what it's all about. But no panic - Uncle Gwyn is here to spread the good word.

The field of play for this galactic test of tactics is a squared board, with 'Home' at the top right hand corner. You start at the bottom left - where else? Your moves are governed by the throws of two dice and you can use their scores in any combination, so that a two and a three could be used to move three up and two across, or maybe five down.

The only time when this rule varies is when you throw doubles. Then you have to move four times which may sound ideal but could cause problems, especially for high-rollers. There are two things that can block your move the playing area's border and the aliens, which move around.

Ahh yes, the aliens! Pity you can't blast these diminutive pests as they stomp across the screen, before settling down to occupy the squares that surround you. Instead you can only eliminate them by rolling just the right figure to let you land on top of one. That spaces them out and there's one weeblie less in your way.

But there's another side to this coin, and it's quite possible for the aliens to make your movement impossible. In that case you have to declare yourself spaced out, take a hefty penalty and suffer the arrival of another nasty... and you'd better do it fast because all moves are made against a time limit. This doesn't give you long to think, and once it's passed you gain further penalty points for every second spent in thought.

As if this wasn't bad enough, you only have twenty rolls to reach that top right-hand corner or you start to take even more penalties, which not only detract from your final score they carry on into the next round of the game!

Every time you win at Spaced Out you're faced with a re-match against a different set of aliens. Now a win is fairly simple to achieve the first time, because all you have to do is rack up fewer penalties than the rather generous initial handicap. But in your next game, your own previous penalties becomes the number you must beat.

This adds a whole new element to the game. Though it would be nice to zoom up, up and away to the right without even having to tread on the toes of an alien, that won't score any penalties for your next attempt, so you'll have to duplicate your feat just to survive. However, as there's a hundred point penalty attached to each alien's head, you can I afford to space out too many if your handicap is low.

So the game becomes a test of balancing the points to obtain a smooth curve, scoring as high as you dare so that you're not faced with an impossible challenge in the re match. And if the dice start to go against you, things can really get tense as you race for the top corner.

All of this probably sounds much more complex than it really is. In fact there's something strangely seductive in trying to outwit the system by a combination of logic and cool courage as you play a game of dare. A brilliant budget buy for brain-gamers.

Label: Firebird
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Despite the fact that this game has absolutely the most completely naff title that you could ever hope to hear, Spaced Out is quite nifty.

It's more of a strategy game than anything else. You have to move your little green man across the 'holographic' board, from the bottom left hand corner to the top right-hand corner whilst avoiding the nasties. All you do is roll the dice, and making the appropriate number of moves.

You 'space out a nasty' by landing on his square, but he can space you out by hemming you in so you can't move anywhere. This results in the unpleasant practice of 'Giving In' and incurring penalty points.

You choose the size, of the board and the number of nasties that you think you can cope with, and then off you go.

Worth taking a look at for a little, bit of grey matter exercise.