Game Review: Rogue (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

The aim of the game is to return the Amulet of Yendor.  To do this, you must roam around dungeons without getting killed by lurking baddies who may be nearby.

These dungeons aren’t just the width of the screen, and you can scroll the playing area up or sideways if the dungeon allows you to do so when reaching the edges of the screen.  This allows for a bigger playing area on each level.

Along the way, you will come across gold pieces and staircases to go up and down.

Playability

The controls aren’t in the instructions, but it is your usual Q, A, O, P and Space with plenty of joystick options or the cursor keys.

The game is controlled by moving an arrow around the screen.  Although arrow pointer can move in all directions, moving it is rather slightly sluggish.  I found myself moving this a couple of squares by accident where, I only wanted to move it one square.  This is slightly frustrating as it results in you trying to move it back to where you wanted to go (maybe to search or rest.)  Worse still, you can walk into the enemy by clicking accidently to a square.

At the top of the screen, you can move over the words Up, Down, Search and Rest and these can be selected by clicking Space on those words.  Using up and down can move you onto different levels for a new dungeon screen to appear.

If it’s fast action that you’re after in a game, this isn’t going to be a game for you.

You Were Killed By…

Well, I encounter the Emu most which did tend to kill me.  Although it didn’t say, I guess it must have killed or pecked me to excess!

Food also needs to be found too to survive so keep looking and searching.

Array of Armory and Fighting Description

On the right-hand side of the screen there are objects as arrows, maces to arm and defend yourself with.  Dropping an object will leave it in the square where you are so you can find it easily again later.

Pressing Space on an object displays a menu across the middle of the screen in a while banner.  It says the objects name and gives you a choice of how you’d like to use said item.  Objects can be wield, unweild, thrown and dropped etc; depending obviously on what it is.  If you throw an item for example, you will see it travel across the screen in the direction of your choosing.

When you encounter some enemies, you get a description of when you make a strike or miss the enemy.  It’s like fighting with subtitles in an adventure game type of way.

Resting is also a good idea from time-to-time, and you’ll see ZZZ at the bottom of the screen.

The Screen Displays

The dungeons appear to be green at first and even your character is green too.  Doorways are red and other baddies or objects are different colours.

You can only see a small section around where your location is to begin with.  As you explore further, more of the screen gets revealed to you.  You will find almost immediately yourself clicking areas where you can’t move to because there is a wall which you can’t yet see, for example.  Getting closer to it that square will then gradually reveal why.

Status is shown as Hits, Strength and Armour at the bottom of the screen.

Graphics and Font Style

Objects and baddies appear to look like User Defined Graphics (UDG’s) but that is all they need to be and suit a RPG of this nature.  On some levels, your character appears bigger and so do the walls and doors around you, including a bit more colour.

The font used during the isn’t easy to read and have seen far better.  The letter “W” didn’t look like a “W” for instance.  This may sound silly, but it took me a short-while to realise the word Wield was available to select on the menu.

Sound Effects Only

There isn’t much sound as all in Rogue at all.  You will get the occasional sound if you come across something.  Fortunately, the programmer decided not to put in beeps or taps as you took each step so a plus for resisting doing that.

Bytes p:

Although the loading screen is rather good, it is unfortunately marred somewhat when the main game loads in.  When the computer reads the file header, it puts Bytes: p on the screen with half a line of white blocks through the part of the screen around 5 rows down.

This could have been very easily avoided by putting both the ink and paper colour as black and placing the header on the top row of the screen.  It ruins the presentation but there you go, a minor detail.  Still, it is a nice screen until that appears.

Flippy Side

This game is a Flippy release meaning that both the Spectrum and Amstrad versions are on the same cassette.  One side for the Spectrum and the other the Amstrad.  Obviously, an even bigger bargain if you owned both machines.

Just for clarity, this review is purely written for the ZX Spectrum version only.

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