Personal Compuer Games


Orc Attack
By Creative Sparks
Atari 400/800

 
Published in Personal Computer Games #2

Orc Attack

Orc Attack is a new departure for computer games. You are defending your stone castle from the invading Orcs. These are determined little fellows who bang ladders against your castle walls, and then try to swarm up them and cut your head off (literally - if you don't put up a stout defence, you will find your head bouncing on the ground at the foot of the castle wall, looking suitably astonished and gory).

The rules for moving your defender about the castle ramparts are tricky. The graphics are good, but not good enough, it seems, for the Orcs to actually move from the ladders to the castle battlements. So the designers have deemed that once an Orc reaches the top of the ladder and is not reasonably swiftly massacred by you, it can start your head rolling wherever you may be.

This effectively peoples your safe battlement with invisible Orcs, and makes life very difficult. At the top of the battlements, you can grab a sword (which can be swung around using the joystick, to lop any Orc off his ladder).

Orc Attack

Alternatively, you can pick up rocks from either side of the battlements, or (a real treat this for the homicidally-minded), you can pour a pot of burning oil over the Orcs and wipe out one entire wave of attackers. The graphics here should satisfy the most bloodthirsty, as flames engulf all below the battlements.

The dead Orcs form a pyramid at the bottom of the screen. I never survived the massed ranks of ordinary Orcs, but for those whose reflexes are more attuned to this sort of thing, these fellows are only the start.

There are Ninja Orcs (don't ask what a Ninja is, don't you go to the movies?!), who can scale the walls without ladders. There are also Stone Warts and gigantic Demon Trolls to be fended off. As if this were not enough, there is a Sorcerer who nips in from time to time, and urges the hordes on against you.

The graphics are good and the game has a certain originality and style about it.

I soon got tired of having my head cut off while waving my sword about to no avail, but for the skilled, this game might well have something.

TH

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