Game Review: Hektik (Vic 20, Mastertronic)

With most of their early back catalogue taking inspiration from existing titles or popular arcade games, it’s no surprise that Hectik for the Vic 20 fell into that category. Taking its cues from the arcade game Space Panic, the arcade platform brought the arcade hit to home systems, but did this managed to do the the original justice?

Breaking A Mastertronic Tradition

In order to make their games more accessible to the masses, the majority of Vic 20 titles released by Mastertronic were written to run on unexpanded machines. However, Hektik required an 8k/16k memory expansion in order to run. By the time this was released in July 1984, the majority of Vic 20 owners would have owned one or more expansion packs so it was something of a foregone conclusion that everyone could play it!

Options Galore

As with most of their Vic 20 games, it loads in two parts. The first load presents you with instructions, details on the controls for keyboard and joystick (with a helpful diagram), and a summary of the screen layout. It’s all quite useful and lets you familiarise yourself with everything before you get started. Each section can be read through as many times as you need to before progressing onto the game itself which then takes another couple of minutes to load.

In a Panic

So onto the game itself. As I said at the beginning, Hektik is a clone of the arcade game Space Panic. It’s a single screen platform game presented as a series of floors connected by ladders, and the level is populated with a number of alien creatures. You start off at the bottom and can walk and climb freely around the level. The aim is to destroy all of the creatures so you can move onto the next, tougher stage.

You do this using your trusty shovel! You defeat the creatures by digging holes in the floors, waiting for them to fall in then filling the holes in on top of them before they can escape. Do this to all of them and the level is complete and you move on to the next where even more await. They all move in a completely random pattern so you have to think carefully about whether to sit and wait or move around hoping they don’t run into you.

Getting Hektik

Panic quickly sets in as you realise that there’s a timer for each of the levels. While it’s fairly easy to beat on the first level, it gets tougher the more creatures that are on screen at once. What adds to this is the fact that the level resets completely each time you lose a life so you’re sent right back to the beginning.

Also, you have to be careful not to fall through and of the holes you have dug. While you don’t lose a life doing this, it can throw your monster bashing plans awry especially if you’ve already set a trap and got yourself positioned in a nice and (relatively) safe spot.

The final twist the game throws at you is when creatures do manage to escape… they become much tougher to defeat and can even escape after you’ve buried them adding to the challenge ahead of you!

Playability

Hektik’s simplicity means that anyone can pick it up and get playing without any difficulty whatsoever. The frantic gameplay draws you into the game quickly, and you’ll soon find an addictive and engaging game behind the basic visuals. What looks on first impressions to be quite a basic game lies something that will keep you coming back over and over again.

The only real gripe I had with it were the controls as you need to make use of diagonal controls to both dig and fill holes in. While I found it much easier playing with joystick, this is one of those games that really needs to be played using a microswitch joystick to get the most out of it. The only tweak I could have thought of here is to just use up/down with fire to dig and bury but contextual depending on which way you were facing which would have made things much easier to control.

Longevity

While Hektik would be a fun and entertaining game in its own right with plenty of replayability, what really helps keeps you coming back for more and gives it a vastly extended lifespan is the completely random nature of the game. Every time you start a new level – or when you lose a life and your current level restarts – the layout of the level is completely randomised ensuring that no two games are alike.

Add to this the completely chaotic nature of the movement of all of the creatures making them totally unpredictable and you find yourself with a game that will play differently every single time. So no matter how many times you load it up or play it, each game is as new and fresh as the first time you play it.

Graphics and Sound

Compared to many other Vic 20 games from Mastertronic, Hektik does look quite basic. There is little to no animation on the characters apart from when you are digging/burying the creatures or when you are attacked and the backgrounds themselves are fairly bland. Everything is well defined and easy to make out on screen but certainly nothing remarkable, especially when you compare it to most of the other games released by them.

Sound is the pretty much the same. There’s quite a basic tune that plays for a short time and loops continually using a single channel, leaving the other channels free for sound effects. It’s certainly not pushing the Vic’s capabilities in any way but it’s nothing offensive to the ears.

Overall

Hektik isn’t perfect and is let down slightly by it’s clunky controls but if you can get past that there’s a great game lurking underneath. Grab a decent joystick and you’ll have hours of fun with this addictive arcade clone, making this another must buy for the Vic 20 from Mastertronic and cementing their reputation as one of the most consistently high quality publishers for the system.

* * *

You know what we think but why not share your thoughts on this game! Let us know what you think of it in the comments below, or add your own score using the slider in the summary box at the top of the review!