Blast Annual


Yazzie

Author: John Davies
Publisher: RetroSouls
Machine: Spectrum 128K

 
Published in Blast Annual 2020 Volume 2

Yazzie

From the same team who brought you Gluf: Tesla Frog comes Yazzie. In this game you must guide your guy around a maze of platforms, ladders and bricks. Collect all the gold bars on each level to progress to the next, and avoid the other little guys that are roaming about.

Developer: Retro Souls

Retro Souls has been around for a long time in this retro gaming caper "keeping da Speccy alive" from as far back as 2011. Some of the games you may know them from include Alter Ego (2011), Gravibots (2014) and Lirus (2015). Based in Novosibirsk, Russia, Retro Souls is a small team who have had a pretty busy 2019 making games not only for the Spectrum but also for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and the MSX platforms.

Gameplay

It's business as usual for a platformer. Climbing ladders and traversing platforms. You can also drop down through platforms and dig holes in the brick work if you have a pickaxe. There are arrows that cause bridges to appear and others that cause a wrap around effect sending you from the bottom to the top of the screen. There's also fires all over the place that are fatal to touch.

Timed floor mines which explode a few seconds after you walk over them leave big holes in the bricks. If you're standing on them you die but if you stand one square either side of them you don't. The enemies are able to create bridges too and use the wrap around arrows. They don't set off bombs but fire pits are also fatal to them too.

Your guy or Yazzie has unlimited lives so there's no game over even if you get set on fire a thousand times. The game doesn't end until you complete its twenty levels. Levels are well designed and quite varied in layout but not appearance. You can press R to restart a level if you get stuck or just want to abort the attempt.

Graphics are cute 8x8 efforts that seem to make use of the bifrost engine which allows more than two colours per character square. Very pretty indeed. The music is soothing, with some pleasant enough spot effects. Neither distracts you from the game.

Likes

The simple Lode Runner-esque gameplay, the professional presentation, graphics, music and spot effects. Good use and understanding of the colour palette. Large playing area, twenty distinctive levels. Unlimited lives, the sheer fun of it, totally retro, totally cool!

Dislikes

It's too easy and over all too soon. Only two out of the twenty screens made me think for longer than a minute. Most screens were completed in a couple of minutes, and I'm no video game wizard.

Verdict

It's a wonderful, polished and well presented game. A lot of fun to play but far too easy, even for the average player.

John Davies

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