Computer Gamer


Little Computer People
By Activision
Amstrad CPC464

 
Published in Computer Gamer #24

Little Computer People

This game came out on the Commodore 64 some years ago and it is difficult to understand the delay in converting it onto the Amstrad.

The idea behind the game concerns a little man living inside your computer - if there are only little men, how come they don't die out? The game provides a 'house on a disk' that the Little Computer Person can live in. When you first insert the disk it takes a note of your name and creates your LCP who will then take residence in your house!

The characteristics of the LCP are decided by the computer and written onto disk. This means you have an individual LCP that nobody else has - there are enough variable parameters to ensure that everybody has a slightly different character.

Little Computer People

What happens then is largely up to you. There are various things that you can do to the character and various things that he can do to you. Direct controls involve leaving him food, dog food (yes, he has a dog), water and LPs for his record player. You can also pat him *and* get him to use the telephone!

As well as this, you can type in adventure-type commands to get him to use his various facilities. These include: a TV, a piano, a record player, a computer and a box of games *and* he also writes you a letter.

When he writes a letter, he gets out a piece of paper, inserts it in a typewriter and types away (one small point Activision, the carriage on the typewriter goes the wrong way!). All this appears on the top of the screen.

Little Computer People

The music is stored on disk and can be played either through a record player or via the little person himself bashing away on the keyboard.

If you or the LCP gets bored with all this, he can turn to card games; either 'card war' (a very simple game), poker (I'm sure he cheats!) or anagrams.

You get the idea? A little character that lives a life of his own that you can influence. The idea is to keep him happy and alive, other than that there is little to it.

This is not a game, more of a pastime. After the first few times it gets rather boring. The novelty soon wears off and it ends up in that section of your games collection used to amuse non-computer people or relatives who say, "Yes, but what can it do?" £15 is a lot to pay for a program like this. I'd probably ever complain at £2. Also, because of the concept, the game can only be run on a disk machine too.