Game Review: Colony (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic/Bulldog)

Survival and Colonisation

Now that you’ve been relocated onto a new planet, the aim is to start colonising it to stay alive.  You need to grow food (namely, mushrooms) and generate your own power, using solar panels to have a power supply.

As if that isn’t enough, you also need to keep the ants contained within closed off areas.  Gradually, the ants will start to breakdown and decay the fences, gates and steel barbed wire and are intent on tracking you down and destroying you.

Eight Squared Equals…

Colony is set in a game playing area of 8×8 screens, totalling 64.  To help you get to know your way around, the biggest green square is your location.  Each location was accessible and no screens were blocked off.

One square on the radar is half filled green and that is where the deliveries are delivered when the supply ship drops off its cargo.  You can tell this screen is different as it has four diagonal arrows pointing towards the centre of that screen.

The ever so slightly more out of reach screens are those generally around the perimeter of the gameplay area.  With those, you need to move through small maze style screens consisting of rocks and cacti.  It involves a few twists and turns to get through and should you encounter any ants firing at you, can make it a bit more of a challenging to get through safely.

Playability

Colony is no slouch when it comes its pace and the gameplay therefore feels nifty and responsive.  Your Patrol Droid is easy to steer, and you always feel in control of it.  It can move in horizontal and vertical directions with no diagonal steering.

When you fire a shot (which are shaped like spiked stars), they don’t just destroy the first thing they hit.  Whatever ants were along the same row, they also all got wiped out too.  A bit like shooting two birds with one stone, as it were.  A well-timed shot could therefore save ammunition as your Patrol Droid doesn’t have an infinite supply of bullets.  In fact, I counted that you get 62 shots, and your supply is shown on the second bar in rectangles colour red, green and white.

Running into an ant doesn’t lose your life but does deplete your shield.  In fact, it will destroy the ant which will degrade into dust.

One small annoyance though was when leaving a building (except for the Droid Bay), it always results in a shot fired downwards.  Clicking exit when leaving a building requires you to press the fire button and when you return outside, that always fire an unwanted shot, lowering your precious ammunition supply.

Graphics and Animation

The graphics are overall good, colourful and neatly animated.  When you shift along, you see the legs moving and the ants are well drawn out too.  There is no colour clash either, due to the way each way is designed which is good.

Buildings at the same time look vertically structed and isometric and the walls are all isometric.

The only thing that I really found strange was that the cacti were black, rather than green.  My thought being that, perhaps, this maybe down to the yellow background?

Music and Sound

Once loaded, you are treated to a colourful menu screen with accompanies by a very good tune which plays for just under a minute.  This is 48K Spectrum track at its near best using the beeper and does at times sound like it gives the illusion of three sound channels with the main channel, claps and chirping.  Damn, clever stuff indeed!  After completion of the soundtrack, an ant appears, walking left to right, occasion firing a star across in the direction with some sound effects.

Fortunately, when moving around, there is no repetitive footstep tapping noises (unlike so may other games).  Sounds effects are heard when you fire, hear the aliens gnawing away (this make a buzzing sound), when you collide by an ant, fire (or get fired at), entering in building (as the text gets written out a letter at a time) and also the game over screen too (a fairly short repetitive siren type of noise).

The Control Centre

There are seven building available to enter.  One of which is the Control Centre.  Within here your options are to either Order Supplies, Activate Beacon or Deactivate Beacon (plus of course, exit).

Ordering supplies cost credits and the items available are barbed wire, a wooden fence, extra seeds, solar panels, a droid battery, a remote droid, a spare droid body, heavy duty laser, mega force field and a death trap.  Each can be selected by pressing up or down and with quantity you can purchase with the price shown in credits.  Once ordered, it’ll tell you that the ship on en route.

Six other Buildings

You can enter a building my moving up into it (effectively the door).  There is a Building Fencing Store, Barbed Wire Store, Steel Fence Store, General Supplies, Organic Supplies.  Items can be picked up and deposited in these buildings too.

So, for example, the organic store allows you to collect and plant seeds in the grass areas and once they have grown into full mushrooms, pick them and deposit them back to the store.

The Droid Bay is the starting point where you begin playing the game.

Modes

The different modes allow you to also swap between a gun and fence repair replacements.  You can carry up-to four items at once (shown by the coloured squares at the top centre of the screen displaying showing what is being carried).

You can tell which mode you are in, as the graphic in the top-right hand box is either a gun or depicting a hand holding an object.  You can’t shoot in this mode but can easily change back to the shooting mode with a press of the mode button.

Grid Failing

When your energy starts to fall low, you are warned that the grid is failing and the word power starts to flash in red.  Maintaining your power supply is therefore essential.

Keyboard Options

As well as the usual directional and fire key, there is a Mode key, pause and abort key.  The good thing about the abort key is that if it was accidentally pressed, you are given the option of whether you want to (Y/N) or not.  There is nothing worse (maybe other a power-cut!) than getting into a game and pressing that in error.  It is handy though, should you have say selected a joystick option say, in error and can then go back to the menu much quicker.

Humour

The game also has an amusing game over page, where it describes the death of your droid and how you are pushing up the mushrooms.  Together, it displays the amount of time that you survived in cyan text in the lower part of the screen.

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