Alessandro Grussu


Duckstroma
By Narwhal
Spectrum 48K/128K/+2/+3

 
Published in Al's Spectrum Annual 2021

Duckstroma

Aura is a female duck working as a courier (hopefully with a regular contract and at least the minimum legal salary for her job). Her current assignment is noticeably complex: she has to deliver 8 floppy disks to a customer.

The disks are scattered across 20 platform screens, populated by not-so-friendly beings, whose touch makes Aura lose one of her three lives. Luckily, our friend can bounce on their heads to get rid of most of them, at least until she re-enters the screen. In addition to this, since flight is not her best ability, in order to reach some very high spots she must lay some peculiar eggs: after a few seconds, they explode (!), allowing Aura, if she is close to them, to take a good leap. Other places are protected by barriers that disappear at the flip of a switch.

Duckstroma, like many other titles of this genre created with AGD, is neither very long nor particularly demanding, but it can boast, in addition to the curious explosive eggs feature, a good technical realization. The main character's sprite is really pretty, while the others look a bit sketchy; backdrops are somewhat rough but very colourful, and each screen has quite a different layout from the others. A special mention goes to Shiru (Aleksandr Semyonov)'s "Spring Came" tune that plays during the game on the 128K: it's one of the nicest and catchiest background music I ever heard in a recent production for the Spectrum.

Alessandro Grussu

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