Unique Games: Afterlife, Part 4

Another four years have passed since the previous UG Afterlife post on the FRGCB, so it felt like a good time to scan through all the usual dedicated platform-centric website forums, game developing competition websites and itch.io to get a wide enough range of all things released since the beginning of 2020. As with the previous Afterlife entries, I shall have to restrict each platform's offerings to four or five, when possible, because otherwise I'd be writing this still well after New Year's Day; and the platforms with clearly less unique and/or exclusive games released for them shall have to be featured more quickly at the end of the entry. With this, I wish you all a happy remainder of this Christmas season; prosperity for the year 2025, and hopefully lots of more new games for old platforms for as long as possible.

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MSX

The MSX game developing scene is one of the more adventurous and imaginative ones currently around, and some developers seem to squeeze out increasingly unfathomable things out of the old system on a yearly basis. On the other hand, there are those that turn up the silly knob to eleven. All of these can be found by digging through MSXdev website's annual contests.


1. Open Wide! (Hakogame, 2021)

Our first MSX game ticks both boxes - it's rather unique, and it's silly. You play as a dentist, and your mission is to find rotten teeth in your patients' mouths, and by using three given tools, determine the location of each rotten tooth and pull them out within the given amount of turns. The further you get in the game, the more teeth you have to examine, and the smaller amount of turns you have to find all rotten teeth.

While the topic of dental hygiene is not exactly new in computer and video games, this is the first time I see you actually perform the duties of a dentist, rather than you controlling a toothbrush or dental floss (as in Tooth Invaders), or a tube of toothpaste with the ability to shoot toothpaste at food items (as in Plaque Attack). But Open Wide! is not an action game; more of a puzzle with a forced movement limit. This makes it a very welcome addition to the family of dental hygiene games.


2. Bounce Mania (Zett Darkstone, 2022)

Oddly categorized as a puzzle game, Zett Darkstone's Bounce Mania feels more like a mini-golf game, only without any control over your putting power or a hit limit. Nor is there any bouncing involved, at least in the way you would expect a ball to bounce, since it's all top-down viewed movement in single screen environments with no terrain altitude changes.

"So what is Bounce Mania all about?", I hear myself asking while playing it for the first time. It doesn't really become apparent, until you have completed the first couple of courses. The lack of having control over your putting power is a clear design choice, and the approximating aiming cross-hair is a bit difficult to handle due to its speed, so it's a lot more approximate than is common in mini-golf games. The final piece in the "puzzle" is the laser walls, which kill your ball and sends you back to the beginning of the course. Obviously, the less putts you waste on a course, the better your score. In essence, it's a mini-golf variation with some great graphics, although you do need to have a specific MSX set-up to be able to play it. You can find more information on the game's page at MSXdev'22.


3. Snake & Rhino in the Sketchbook (ARC8, 2023)

Here's one of my recent favourite visual designs in a retro computer game. As the title suggests, you control two characters in isometric environments drawn into the pages of a sketchbook, and your mission is to get both Snake and Rhino to the end of each level with as little movements as possible. So, yes, it's a puzzle game.

The tough part is, one of the characters moves in single steps, and the other one goes an entire lane's length from start to finish in one move unless blocked by something, including your companion. It's not a unique game as such, since I have come across this specific sub-genre before, but the style has been rarely used, and even less commonly in this context. It's a good and fun challenge, and is pleasant to look at and listen to, so what's not to recommend.


4. Xelden Ring (Brain Games, 2023)

Filled polygon 3D games have never been something that I was all that impressed with on the 8-bits, because most of them ran too slow for comfort. Xelden Ring uses this graphic style, and while it doesn't perhaps improve all that much in that regard, it's not unplayable, either. Moreover, this game presents a combination of unexpected elements that I had not even thought of seeing before.

Xelden Ring is basically a Zelda-like RPG-adventure. When you combine that with filled polygon 3D graphics in the style of 3D Construction Kit, and a style of gameplay that wouldn't be too far-fetchedly imported from Nintendo 64's 3D platformers and Zelda games. And when you finally realize, this is being played on a 64kb 8-bit computer, it suddenly becomes more than a bit unfathomable.

So, because of the way this game is built, you have to play it using the keyboard, because you need to move the protagonist in various ways, as well as the camera, and you have two different attack keys, a jump key, an inventory key and an interact key. In other words, a joystick would be sadly under-equipped for this sort of a thing. To ensure you get the best gaming experience and higher framerate, Brain Games give you a suggestion to use the fixed camera mode in combat and platforming.

If you want to play Xelden Ring to immerse yourself in an interesting story, I'm afraid you're going to have to look elsewhere, for it is most of all a demonstration of talent and programming skills. For all I know, Xelden Ring is certainly a unique game, and an exclusive one at that, and it is surprisingly pleasant to play, all things considered.


5. Chimney Man (Gamecast, 2024)

Back to more old-school arcadey things with the last MSX entry this time. Chimney Man is a fairly slow-paced fetch-and-deliver type of an action-puzzler with some nice visuals and catchy music. The pattern goes like this: you need to fetch a key in order to open up a room (a green door), behind which you will find the chimney sweeping device, which you then need to take to the chimney at the top of a building with a lift on its side, and use the device. Once you have used it, you have to repeat the entire procedure to finish the level. Does it get monotonous? Heck yes.

Then again, how many chimney-sweeping games do you know? I'm not saying that there are none, just that I have never come across one before, and I was rather surprised to find my first experience of such on the MSX. Despite all the superficially nice and fairly modern features, Chimney Man plays and feels more like a mid-80's MSX game with its choppy animation and slightly unresponsive controls. I'm not entirely sure, what to make of it, but Chimney Man was one of the more interesting and appropriate titles for this blog in this year's MSXdev contest, so it's here now.

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NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM / FAMICOM

If anything, the NES/Famicom game developing scene is even more active than the MSX one now, but with somewhat limiting development tools in use, there is a tendency towards similar game styles. There are some exceptions, thankfully.


1. Irritating Ship / Proximity Shift (Fiskbit, 2022/2023)

First, I have to mention both games developed by Fiskbit for the NESdev competitions in 2022 and 2023, because not only do they share similar visual and thematic design choices, but also, because they deserve to be mentioned.

The 2022 entry, Irritating Ship, is a cave-flyer with a space theme, and there are two ways to play it: with gravity (pulling you down) or without it, which only leaves you with the usual inertia of a triangular spaceship. The game has no enemies as such, but the tunnels you have to fly through feel seemingly endless, and they get increasingly difficult to navigate. At tolerable intervals, you can pick up a checkpoint token, which not only gives you a new respawn point, but it also changes the colour of the tunnels and awards you with extra ships. There are also three difficulty levels to choose from, from which the hardest one (expert) gives you infinite lives, but the tokens only work as colour changers, and so upon death, you always restart from the beginning. It's good fun, a great challenge, and even after having played dozens of cave flyers, it feels fresh.

Proximity Shift from 2023 is the more unique one of the two games, and is really what gave me the decision to include both Fiskbit's games here. Similarly to Irritating Ship, it's a vertical scroller, where you control a triangular space ship, but the idea is, that you control the ship and its accompanying proximity portal, and try to get through a series of impossible structures by shifting your location using the portal. So, despite how the game looks, it's actually more of a puzzle game than a cave-flyer or a space shooter. I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like this one, so it's an instant favourite for me, and I can only recommend it without reservations.


2. Cha Cha Cha - the NES game (prototype, m8si, 2023)

The last time I heard of a Finnish celebrity starring in a computer game might have been one of those late 1990's or early 2000's rally racing games, like Tommi Mäkinen Rally or something, but I never expected to see another Finnish celebrity to appear on an 8-bit platform. Enter Käärijä with his massive Eurovision Song Contest hit from 2023, "Cha Cha Cha", who practically won the whole thing, had it not been for the arguably unfair scoring system. Funnily enough, I was in Hungary during the contest, who were not taking part of the song contest, so the event had no visual impact there, whatsoever.

Anyway, fast-forward to December 2024, and I find myself browsing through itch.io's offerings of NES games from the past four years for this blog entry, and my eyes are shocked by the unexpected title, "Cha Cha Cha - the NES game" by m8si, in the catalogue. Granted, the release notes say this is a prototype, but it's such a hilariously silly concept to base the game on Käärijä's ESC performance, that I had no choice but to include this game here.

Too bad there is not much to the game as such, because it's a basic left-to-right platformer with no weapons and two "monsters" and a couple of pits that are able to end your journey to the podium. Just looking at the stupid Käärijä dance moves and hearing the song's chorus in 8-bit glory is reason enough for me to include it here. Maybe m8si will finish this game off with more of Käärijä's songs in other levels, him drinking pina coladas to get power-ups and disposing his enemies with his silly dance moves and wrapping abilities. (Käärijä in English basically means "the Wrapper".)


3. Little Sisyphus (Pubbygames, 2023)

One of the weirdest platforming experiences I've had on the NES so far is Pubbygames' Little Sisyphus from 2023, which takes the Greek legend of the tyrant king of Ephyra's curse, in which the gods forced him to roll an immense boulder up a hill for an eternity. Of course, this game being "Little Sisyphus", you control the young version of this cursed Greek person, and instead of rolling a boulder uphill for an eternity, you are chained to a heavy marble, with which you can destroy blocks and collect souls, which is really your mission in the game, but it also hinders your jumping and moving capabilities considerably.

After playing Irritating Ship and Little Sisyphus back to back, it feels as if the creators of these two games decided to split the elements of Thrust and/or Solar Jetman, and work them into two very different games. Little Sisyphus is certainly the more unfathomable of the two, and at least for my capabilities, is infinitely more infuriating than Irritating Ship. Still, it's a rather unique concept, for all I know, and it deserves a look. Who knows, perhaps you might enjoy this one.


4. Slaughter (Mindbleach, 2022-2024)

If you had to name one genre you would have never expected to see on the NES, most of you would probably say "first-person shooter" without having to consider the question for too many seconds. Well, Mindbleach has done the exact thing you shouldn't have even imagined: an FPS for the NES, which plays surprisingly smoothly, and looks like nothing you have ever seen on the NES, either, even though it uses nothing fancier than what you find in Super Mario Bros.

While Slaughter is playable enough, it doesn't exactly look very nice, as the strange graphics often make a muddle of themselves, so it's difficult to find exactly where your enemies are, or what and where are the items you can pick up. At least it has all the gameplay elements from Doom: sprinting, strafing and a few different weapons. It's a very commendable effort, but I wish there would be an upgrade with a more modern mapper like the MXM-1 to make the game more visually palatable, because otherwise, it has proven its point.


5. Crater Song (John Vanderhoef, 2024)

The final entry for the NES this time is John Vanderhoef's magical puzzle-action game Crater Song, which implements the controller method from Nintendo's Wii console by necessitating two controllers being held by one player, but holding them in a remote control sort of vertical manner. This means, of course, that if you are trying to play this game on an emulator, you have to setup the two virtual pads in such a way, as to make the left button up, up button right, and so forth. The full instructions can be accessed through the menu screen.

Most of the game will be spent inside maze rooms that look like they belong in the Adventures of Lolo or Bomberman games, but there are also third-person 3D sections, in which you either dodge on-coming enemies or try to hit them. There are various other game modes included, but the story mode is unusually compelling, mostly thanks to the unusual control method, but the story line itself is somewhat unusual as well. Certainly, one of the best NES titles I have had the pleasure to play lately, and if the controls don't make it unique enough, at least it's exclusive. As I'm writing this entry, the game is in 40% discount, so grab yours for cheap while you can.

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ATARI 400/800

First of the less active communities under this Afterlife list is the 8-bit Atari computers game developers, who mostly focus on porting more or less well-known games to the platform, although some choose to write their games for the most enhanced 8-bit Atari computer, the 130XE, which I don't have, so it always annoys me to see something potentially great that I can't play without an emulator. Anyway, I managed to dig up a handful of interesting exclusives from the Atarimania archive.

1. Flob (Tristesse Game Studio, 2021)

Tristesse's puzzle-platformer Flob feels like basically any indie PC platformer from the first decade of this millennium, with the gimmick being, that you cannot jump, but you can flip the screen to make Flob fall to the other side of the room, or a surface that you hit first.

It has a fantastically ugly/beautiful graphical style, some brilliant music, and as is common in these types of games, a good deal of secrets to find. For an 8-bit Atari game, it is quite large, too, so once you get the hang of the controls, the locations are what truly draw you in. So, while not exactly unique, it's an Atari exclusive, and highly recommendable.


2. onEscape (Vortador Games, 2022)

A point'n'click adventure on an Atari 400/800 isn't exactly something you hear about every day, so when I came across onEscape, I had to know how Vortador Games had designed it to make it work. I wasn't disappointed, by any means; rather, I got so sucked into the game, that I couldn't stop until I realized I still have tons of games to get through for this blog post a couple of hours later. I still haven't completed it, though.

The way they made onEscape into a viable 8-bit point'n'click adventure, was to take the otherwise necessarily animated character out of the picture, and merely show you locations linked to each other from a certain early Sierra-like perspective. You only need to move the cursor, push the fire button on things that are interactive, and you will get hints. Picking up items enables you to combine them with other things, as usual. The atmosphere created by the slightly tongue-in-cheek sci-fi graphics, story, and fitting music is nice, and it makes you wish there were more of these kinds of games for the 8-bit Atari computers. Very much worth a look.


3. Time Wizard (Amarko, 2023)

Dig up your Atari 130XE's for this puzzle-platformer, because what we have here is an 8-bit reimagining of the modern indie PC classic, Braid. Okay, so it's not unique, but it's not a direct copy of Braid, so I'll let it pass this time, because Time Wizard is easier to just pick up and play.

Like the earlier gimmicky puzzle-platformer, Flob, here's another gimmicky puzzle-platformer, that takes time manipulation as its chosen trick. You can, and need to, rewind your actions in order to be able to get back to earlier places in each level, and upon death, you are required to do so anyway. The idea is to collect all the items in each level and exit through a teleporter beam, and there are 15 levels in total. It's not the prettiest game around, but the rewind effect is visually nice, and more importantly, the game's playability is spot on. Just goes to show you the level of current retro game developers.


4. Ruff in Trouble (shanti77, 2024)

If you happen to be an Amiga fan, you will immediately recognize, Ruff in Trouble is not what you might call a unique game, since it was directly inspired by the Amiga classic Ruff 'n' Tumble from 1994. However, the fact that this game was even made, and won this year's ABBUC Software Contest, tells you that it shouldn't be overlooked as a demake, because it's really a properly good action-platformer in its own right, and something I have never seen anything as high in quality on the 8-bit Atari machines.

This is another one of those brilliant new games that I can only experience by using an emulator, because it requires a 130XE to work. But for that, you get large omni-directionally, mostly smoothly scrolling levels, well-defined - if designedly blocky - graphics with use of colours that I haven't seen on the Atari so far, and use of the sound chip that rivals the best of the SID composers. In terms of gameplay, it's really nothing you haven't seen on the Amiga and beyond - running, jumping, shooting, climbing and collecting coins and tokens to proceed to the next level. But it's a surprisingly competent pure-bred 90's action-platformer on a machine that doesn't have a lot of these. Ruff in Trouble might not be unique in any sense of the term, but it is exclusive for the 130XE, and it deserves a look.


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AMSTRAD CPC

From the big three, at least in terms of new games that are easy to find and download without needing to pay overly much for them, we first take a look at a few offerings from the Amstrad community from the last few years. The abundant use of various game designers makes the rate of uniqueness somewhat lower than on platforms with no designers, but here's a few little gems that I managed to dig up.


1. Castaway (The T Team, 2022)

We start with a flip-screen adventure roughly in the visual style of the first Legend of Zelda for the NES, which I was hoping would be a survival game, since it's set in a deserted island. Instead, what we get in Castaway is a puzzle-adventure, in which you need to collect items, of which each can be used for dealing with different specific things: planks for making bridges across streams, saws for cutting down certain types of trees, water bottles for filling up your hydration levels, and so forth.

I have always been a fan of these "castaway on a deserted island" sort of games, regardless of their genre, and this is no different. Sure, it's not quite as compelling as a proper survival game, but it's one of the nicer Amstrad-exclusives of recent years, that do not follow a completely common pattern.


2. Gold Maze (PD, 2023)

Here's a variation on a tabletop push-out labyrinth board game, which was released as "Muuttuva Labyrintti" here in Finland, and I found out that it was released as "Amazing Labyrinth" abroad. In Gold Maze, though, you get no monsters to harrass you, nor do you get competition from other players, and the maze here is slightly larger than in the board game.

The idea is to collect all of the treasure from the randomly generated push-out labyrinth, and you need to figure out, how to gain access to all the treasure by pushing new slabs of labyrinth pieces into the board. There are no dice in the game, but instead of taking one step each turn, as you do in the board game, you can move your player character so many steps at each turn, as to reach a treasure item, after which you get a new turn, and new treasure items will appear on the board. I have never seen the board game as an official computer translation, and Gold Maze might be the closest equivalent so far, and as a variation, it seems like a unique one, too, unless there is someone who knows better.


3. Survive the Week (CPCretrodev.byterealms, 2021)

Survive the Week is another title that I was hopeful would be an 8-bit survival game, but turned out to be something of an upgrade to Spectrum's A Day In The Life instead. You play as a regular guy, just as the player is supposed to be, and it is your assumed job to do all sorts of things that get you through a week in your so-called ordinary life.

As the game goes on, however, it turns out that your life has great potential at veering off into the realm of in-ordinary, but you need to be actually willing to let go of your usual routine. The game has an inner clock, which suggests you should go to bed at some point, because you also have to wake up at 7 am each morning.

Survive the Week plays largely like a platforming adventure, where you need to interact with points of interest to keep you in good energy. Drinking beer or donating blood gives you a dizzy feel, drinking coffee or flirting with secretaries gives you an energy boost, colliding with an angry boss or an alert guard will drain your energy, and some things are there just for the sake of fun interaction. For my unwanted money, it's exactly the upgrade A Day In The Life needed to reach its full potential on an 8-bit platform, and I can only give this game my fullest recommendations. Despite not actually being a survival game.


4. Leon Marchand's Olympic Challenge (Praline, 2024)

The fourth and final one that I could by any stretch consider unique and/or exclusive was this surprising little sports game. The unique thing about it is, that regardless of the title, which suggests a full-fledged multi-event sports game, as in Daley Thompson's Olympic Challenge, Leon Marchand's offering only features swimming events. Honestly, I do not think I have ever come across an 8-bit water-based sports game that is entirely about swimming, so this could well be a unique game in that regard.

Of course, what it feels like first and foremost is a joke, although it has to be said, Leon Marchand won four gold medals and a team bronze in the Paris 2024 Olympics, so credits where credits are due. Swimming has never been one of the most appealing events in any multi-event sports game, so having a game dedicated entirely on competitive swimming has something fishy about it. But no, LMOC is actually an interesting little game, with some superb details put into Leon's animations of different swimming styles. Too bad the gameplay itself consists of nothing more than relentless joystick or keyboard waggling, when the swimming styles could have easily allowed for different movements to be performed in a timed manner. The only other big fault I can find here is, that you never know what you're against, so you have no idea, what sorts of times are required to win or lose. In any case, LMOC is still a surprisingly interesting showcasing of a single-genre sports game, and certainly a CPC-exclusive, if not completely unique.

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COMMODORE 64

The two biggest and most interesting platforms for new games are, as you might have guessed, C64 and Spectrum. Since I haven't had that much time lately to play new games on anything, I'm just going to quickly review five games that I have at least tested on each of the two machines, that I felt like have something unique about them.


1. Bad Moon Rising (Psytronik, 2021)

While not particularly well-received compared to the obvious material of inspiration, Stephan Katteneder's Bad Moon Rising is still an interesting multi-genre action game that doesn't take itself too seriously. Perhaps that's the whole problem - not taking itself seriously enough - because while the inspiration clearly comes from Access Software's Beach-Head games and Raid Over Moscow, there is an unusual silliness about it, that puts the game in a similar sci-fi environment as Maniac Mansion or the Iron Sky movies.

I'm a huge fan of these types of games, and even though Bad Moon Rising proved not to be too challenging, and practically follows a similar pattern for each playthrough, the humour and pseudo-modern touches in the design make me partial to it. After all, Bad Moon Rising is more of a tribute to the old Access games, rather than a full attempt at creating something equally magnificent on a slightly larger scale. It was one of the last games from Psytronik to be released in floppy disk format, as the production of floppy disks has since been discontinued, so it's now only available through itch.io. So, as a concept, it's just about barely unique; as a combination of genres perhaps more so; but being a C64-exclusive and several of the other factors put together, I would say it fits this list very nicely.


2. Ball and Chain (Zzap!64, 2022)

What feels like a fairly basic endless runner type of a game at first, Dr. Mortal Wombat's Ball and Chain is thankfully a bit more than that. You control a floating rubber ball, not unlike Wizball with full movement upgrades, in a constantly sideways moving screen, and you need to pick up coins and stars, and avoid getting squeezed between the screen border and walls. This is, of course, the way things seem at first, except for the heavy metal ball chained to yourself, which pulls you around - mostly down, of course. Later on, though, you will come across some real hazard, like spikes, floating mines and darts being thrown at you. Mines can be destroyed by swinging the metal ball at them, which then will release one of a few different types of power-up bubbles. Also, the game accelerates as you make progress, and collecting stars will make the metal ball heavier.

With all that included in gameplay, Ball and Chain proves itself something very much more than just another endless runner. Besides, it has a designed game map layout, so one should expect to actually finish the game eventually. Originally released as a Zzap!64 exclusive, Ball and Chain was later made available for download for your chosen price from itch.io, and it is one of the nicest coffee break fun games I've played on the C64 in a long while.


3. Yeti Mountain (Protovision, 2023)

Perhaps the most surprising hit game from Protovision's catalogue in 2023 was this multi-genre action-adventure game, loosely based on the old Windows game, SkiFree. Yeti Mountain does, in fact, incorporate that game in a very important way, and gets your skiing skills honed up as never before. Even so, Yeti Mountain is much more than that, with Zelda-esque adventuring, and later on, some difficult platforming, included into the mix. Most oddly, the game has an inner timer, that requires you to complete the game in the given time limit, although it needs to be pointed out, that completing certain tasks eases up on that.

If for nothing else, Yeti Mountain can be considered a rather unique experience, thanks to the unexpected combination of elements - particularly when the game is partly based on a free-form skiing game. Too bad the skiing part itself is not the most comfortable version of the event around, not by a long shot, but it does serve a solid purpose here. I do recommend Yeti Mountain to any C64 gamer with a taste for some light adventure, but it's certainly not to everyone's tastes even then. Timers are, after all, rarely a positive element in any game.


4. Terrestrial (Psytronik, 2022)

As much as I like all the brilliant platformers and even a couple of new racing games that have been released in the last couple of years, the quality alone isn't enough to grant an inclusion on this list. Instead, I decided that I will include Psytronik's second Access-a-like game, Terrestrial, for the simple reason that it's a C64-exclusive multi-genre action game, that feels different enough.

This one was developed by Icon64, and they have taken a more direct copy-paste approach from Raid Over Moscow and Beach-Head this time, at least to some extent. Some of the included segment ideas are taken from Quasar (1984) and Cabal (1989) and other slightly more modern games to give Terrestrial a clearly more modern feel to it, but for the most part, it's all based on the old Access Software classics. Of course, with brilliant graphics and sounds from Trevor Storey and Saul Cross, Terrestrial reaches new heights in presentation that Access were never able to, although the gameplay does feel a bit bland by comparison. Even if you can't call Terrestrial unique in any real sense, it is a nice combination of elements that works well enough, and it is a C64-exclusive, so there's that.


5. Seawolves (Kodiak64, 2024)

I had to include Jon Woods' so far only released effort for the C64, even though Seawolves is not much more than an upgrade to the old 1976 arcade classic, Sea Wolf by Bally Midway. The fact that this game was the first to arrive from Jon Woods after announcing that he would be using a new, non-standard colour mode in his still unfinished side-scrolling shooter Parallaxian, and this one using that same graphics mode, makes this game so far a unique experiment on this aspect of game designing, since it's the only one that has been released so far. However, there are also various play modes you can try out if possible: single player against computer, two player competitive and two player co-operative modes, which makes it an upgrade over the arcade classic in that regard, too.

Unfortunately, Kodiak64's website has been taken off for the time being as I'm writing this blog entry, and because the game was sold strictly on that website, I cannot really give you a link to anything, because it is still considered a commercial release. Nevertheless, it is an impressive version of the old game, and for old arcade fans, I highly recommend you to check this version out, whenever it is available again. Whenever Jon decides to get his survival game Deep Winter released, I will probably replace Seawolves on this list with that one.

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SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM

Most of the Spectrum games with the most potential and credentials for including on this list were made pre-2023, so that's why there are no games here from the last year. If you do know of some more unique games from this short period, though, that I might have missed, please feel free to throw some links into the comments.


1. Cosmic Payback (PROSM Software, 2020)

PROSM Software has managed to squeeze out sheer excellence in both of their two games so far released for the 48k Spectrum, so I have included both of them here. Firstly, Cosmic Payback is an arcade-style ball-bouncing puzzle-action game in 3D, which automatically makes it a bit of a rarity. I can only think of Hewson's Impossaball being an inspiration to Cosmic Payback, only with some elements taken from Que-Dex, Trailblazer, Rock 'n' Roll, and some more modern ball-themed games on PC.

The idea is to collect all the gold from each level before exiting through a portal. Your ball bounces on with a constant bounce, so you can get yourself fairly easily over holes and obstacles, and calculate the best routes to your destination. As you make progress, the levels will include moving obstacle slabs, teleports, disappearing slabs, slabs that make you jump longer and path togglers, just to name some. Oh, and the "gold" you need to collect is also a form of slab in a specific type of shading. The game runs smoothly as anything, although the graphics are as monochrome as you can expect on Spectrum, and the music and sound effects are fantastic. The only thing I don't really like about this game is the title, which doesn't necessarily stick into your mind as something that would make you think of a bouncing ball. I suppose the storyline might shed some light on that, but when has a bouncing ball game ever needed a back story? Well, whatever you feel about that, Cosmic Payback is a fantastic game that could have easily been a hit game in the late 1980's, and not only is it exclusive for the ZX Spectrum, it is also unique enough.


2. Loxley (World XXI Soft Inc., 2022)

Of course, I know there was an official game made out of Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in the 1990's for the primary Nintendo consoles back then, but us computer gamers were only given Robin Hood games that didn't have anything to do with the movie. Happily for Spectrum gamers, World XXI Soft righted this wrong in 2022 with Loxley, which uses the movie poster in its loading screen rather unapologetically, if only to make a point. As if that weren't enough, there is a short full-motion video sequence digitized straight from the movie at the end of the intro to rub it all in further.

The game itself is basically a flip-screen action-adventure with some puzzle elements. You get to battle foes with both sword and bow, both of which actually require some skill to wield. You also get to upgrade your fighting skills by paying the thief school teacher at Sherwood. Most impressively, perhaps, the game is non-linear, and you can travel to different English towns upon will, by approaching your horse. Naturally, this freedom requires some memory, so Loxley does require a 128k Spectrum to work. Happily, the graphics are excellent, if occasionally somewhat colourless, and the sounds are just as brilliant with some voice samples thrown in between all kinds of slashes and dings. I have to say, this is probably my favourite Robin Hood themed game I have ever played, and it's a bit of a shock to say it's an unofficial product on none other than the 128k Spectrum, but the way this game is built for this specific machine makes it kind of unique, too.


3. Escape from M.O.N.J.A.S. (Rastersoft, 2021)

In 2018, Innersloth released their highly acclaimed online multiplayer casual game, Among Us, which is more of a social experiment than a straightforward game. Rastersoft's 2021 tribute to Among Us is more of an adventure game with dialogue being the foremost method of getting forward.

Escape from M.O.N.J.A.S. is also a fairly unusual game in the catalogue of Spectrum games, since it's a four-way scrolling tilted top-down game, and it has been made to look more like an indie PC game from the early/mid-2000's (in DOS style) than a clear Spectrum game. It's an interesting little beast, with only the lack of a skip button for dialogue bringing it down a bit. Having been busy with too many things lately, I haven't really been able to advance in this game very far, but the solutions to certain puzzles so far have been surprisingly shocking, which I suspect is part of the original game's appeal. Anyway, it's a highly recommendable game, unlike most offerings on the Speccy, and it's different enough from the source material to stand on its own as much as it is able to.


4. Trace It! (PROSM Software, 2020)

I rarely include more than one game from a developer or publisher for these lists, but PROSM Software's meagre output has been so good and mention-worthy, that I just couldn't help myself. Trace It! is a game that I remember playing on pen and paper as a young boy, only the idea back then was, you would draw a line through a drawn course, and the person who drew the course would be there to guide you through it by somehow indicating, if you were too close to an edge.

In Trace It!, you basically control the smiley face shaped pen with your joystick in a manner, in which you pull the joystick to any direction to accelerate that way, and pulling the joystick in the opposite direction will decelerate and eventually move to that direction; but you obviously see the course here, because there are no sonic indicators. To make up for that convenience, the game features moving monsters that will eat the pen upon collision, although they will not affect the drawn line. The game progresses in difficulty through the narrowing of paths and the behaviour of different enemies, so level 3 can already be rather tough. There is also a practice mode of sorts in the form of free draw, which is good to give you an idea of how the pen is to control. Trace It! looks, sounds and feels like a proper early Spectrum game, that could have easily been one of the Sinclair releases in 1983/84. It appears, they actually CAN make them like they used to, which makes Trace It! a rarity.


5. Seraphima (ZOSYA Entertainment, 2023)

I wanted to include any game from the magnificent Russian developer ZOSYA Entertainment, because they dropped out from the retrogaming map recently, largely thanks to the political situation at the moment. Which is a great pity, because ZOSYA brought some much-needed colour and amazing advancements in Spectrum game design during their active years; just pick anything from 2019's Drift! (which I included in the Afterlife #3 blog post) or Valley of Rains to 2023's swansong that we have here: Seraphima, an extraordinary action-platforming adventure somewhat in the same style as Joe Blade, only much more evolved.

Seraphima tiptoes the line between retro and retro-modern with ease. As with ZOSYA's previous action-platforming games Valley of Rains and Angels, you get the large close-up graphics that were made familiar to gamers by Spanish game developers in the mid-80's with Trantor, Savage and Freddy Hardest, just to name a few. The playability, however, has taken considerable influences from the Turrican games, and checkpoints have been included for making the game more comfortable for gamers that didn't grow up in the 80's, which is nice, since it is one of those non-linear games that require you to backtrack and memorize locations.

Thematically, Seraphima is laden with parabels to the current world situation, but on the surface, is a battle between the last of the forces of good - the Guardians - against an army of evil - the Marauders. Oddly, though, you need to fight against natural elements and creatures as well, which raises the question: why should we be fighting against nature, when the evil is supposedly all in men? Or are there some forces of nature against us by default? Of course, you could also take this all in superficial terms and just go around destroying everything in your way that is out there to destroy you, which is how the game works, really. There aren't many 8-bit games that make you philosophize, so when something like that comes along, it's perhaps only proper that such a game comes from Russia. Here's to hoping this situation will get solved peacefully, sooner rather than later.

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Finally, we have three games to end this blog post, and thus this year at FRGCB; one for each chosen platform, since it has become harder and harder to find anything new and interesting that doesn't require either considerable amounts of money or deeper internet diving. Again, if you have any properly unique and machine-exclusive games to announce, which I have somehow overlooked from the past 3-4 years, feel free to mention them in the comments.


ACORN BBC MICRO: Polymer Picker (Stephen Scott, 2022-2024)

There were a few interesting new game releases for the Acorn computers, but the one that I got most drawn in by was an old-school arcade-like game called Polymer Picker from a new developer called Stephen Scott, who originally wrote the game in 2021, but with help from the Stardot community, the game got some massive optimizations and upgrades to make it actually playable, and the most recent version was a Christmas update, released less than a week ago, featuring Christmas-themed graphics.

The reason why I chose Polymer Picker for the only BBC Micro entry was, because of the theme of the game, which I don't think has really featured in computer games to this extent before. You play as a diver, who has taken it as his/her/etc. job to clear the seas from pieces of plastic, before the fish accidentally eat them and die. Of course, being a diver, you get a finite amount of oxygen, which you need to refill every once in a while by approaching the small oxygen tank that appears under the boat, and swimming faster also depletes your oxygen quicker. This wouldn't be much of an arcade game, were there no enemies lurking around, so you get the usual jellyfishes and sharks and whatnot. The collision detection is still a bit wonky, as you collect the pieces of plastic with your mid-body, but as long as you remember that, it's all good. So, while it's not particularly unique in gameplay, it is an unfamiliar concept in 8-bit computer games, and it's worth mentioning for that alone.


ATARI 2600: Alien Holocaust & Alien Holocaust II (Teknamic Software, 2023)

Quite possibly the most claustrophobic and properly horrific game that I have ever seen on the Atari 2600 is Teknamic's Alien Holocaust, which offers us a series of different kinds of arcade-action levels, where you must try to avoid getting abducted by aliens and/or growing insane at all costs. Yeah, that's a pretty heavy concept for an Atari 2600 game alright.

Even more amazingly, Alien Holocaust is based on the Super-8 short film of the same name by Marcus Garrett, which makes it a doubly niche product. It is extremely playable, though, and follows the short film's plot rather nicely. First, you drive a car and dodge the alien tractor beam and monsters on the road, until you reach the forest. Next, you need to find a key from the underground lairs to enter a cabin somewhere on the surface, beyond screens of wildlife and aliens. Third, you need to stay inside the cabin, collect things and avoid alien things. Eventually, you will actually get to control the UFO that's been harrassing you the whole time, which I assume means that you have become the alien at that point, but when you think the game is over, the sequel is waiting to be played, which will finish off the storyline. I haven't gotten around to actually playing the sequel yet, but it looks like more of a straight shoot'em-up instead of a mixed genre thing. Therefore, the screenshots below are taken straight from the game's itch.io page.

Both games were released in 2023 by Teknamic through itch.io, and are available for €5.99 each, but there are also playable demos available, if you feel unsure. For Atari 2600 games, they're very evolved and have a unique feel to them, so even though I usually follow my usual rule of "no sequels", the two Alien Holocaust games deserve the exceptional spot on this list.


SEGA MEGADRIVE/GENESIS: Rick and Alice - Retro Games Hunters (wip; Sevilha, 2023)

We end our fourth Afterlife list with a very appropriate game for us retro gamers, and even more particularly the most avid collectors among us. Sevilha's Retro Games Hunters puts the player into the shoes of Rick and Alice, who travel around the USA, looking to get all the missing consoles and games from their collection.

It hasn't really become clear to me yet, how to actually make money in this game, so you could buy all the consoles and games to fill up your collection, but the basic idea is apparently to collect items from different areas, sell them if necessary, and drive to other places to collect more items and sell them elsewhere. It's the selling part that has remained unclear to me so far, and driving around in your car is extremely gas consuming, which takes a lot of money, and colliding with enemies and their projectiles will drain your energy, which needs to be refilled at gas stations by eating food. I did come across a bug, in which the game gives you basically an infinite amount of money, but I have no idea how to reproduce it.

Despite the sometimes odd gameplay mechanics, Retro Games Hunters is a compelling piece of work, not the least because of its high quality graphics and music, which are often just as nostalgia-feeding as the main subject matter of the game. There is also a two-player mode here, but as it is, Retro Games Hunters is still very much a work-in-progress title, and I hope to see the game finished soon, because it is a properly unique one with an idea that's close to the hearts of retrogamers.

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That's it for this Afterlife entry, and I suppose another might come along in another four years, if this blog is still around and active. I'm going to have to take January off again to load up my batteries, but regular blogging activities will resume in February 2025. Thanks for reading and keeping the retro spirits up; see you next year!