Neut Tower for DOS

Today’s game was made by SpindleyQ starting in 2018 releasing a shareware episode in early 2020. It is an EGA puzzle game that would have fit right into the shareware gaming scene in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The author took on an unique challenge, doing all the development on a 286 machine without using any tools created after 1992.

They used Borldand Turbo C which was a very popular language at the time, and used that to make almost all the tools they used for producing the game. In a way this makes it feel much more like a game from the era, everything you see could have been genuinely made at the time.

The graphics are in EGA, and uses the Borland Graphical Interface (BGI) as an engine for drawing to the screen. Whilst not super fast, the BGI is good enough to make this game run smoothly and animate well. The graphics style is well put together, colourful and animated smoothly.

There is some basic sound support for the Adlib card and the PC speaker, I used the Adlib support and I thought the sound is perfectly reasonable. There isn’t any music and there are some simple sound effects for most events in the game.

The controls are fairly simple, basic movement controls, a key to activate switches, a key to activate your companion, and a key to switch which character you are controlling.

The games starts with Jaye sitting at her desk when an earthquake hits. The building becomes quite damaged and she gets trapped in her office. She then activates Neut, an AI program that she has been working on. Jaye is able to move through the real world and interact with switches and turn on terminals whilst Neut can only travel through the network cabling in the walls and use powered on terminals as teleporters to access and hack security devices. Your goal is simply to escape the damaged building.

Along the way there are snippets of story mixed in with the puzzles, and both are generally done exceptionally well. There are companions to find and help, and terminals to interact. Although there is some mild coarse language, it’s not over the top, and isn’t really all that bad. Keep an eye out for clues, one puzzle I did had clues in the boss screen, not somewhere you’d usually look!

Neut Tower is a compelling and interesting puzzle game. The available shareware episode is a bit short at only 6 levels, but they are very well designed and fun to play. On the authors website it says this is still in development, so there may be more content yet to come and the possibility of some registered episodes. You can download it and support the author on their website.

Paganitzu: Romancing the Rose for DOS

Whilst Apogee were better known for publishing action games they also had some puzzle games in their catalog. Todays game, Paganitzu is one of those puzzles games, having some features in common with Sokoban. I’m just playing the shareware episode, but you can still buy Paganitzu on steam or through the 3drealms website. It was originally released late 1991 and made by Keith Schuler.

The story of the game is fairly simple, it’s a continuation from the first game. Alabama Smith (totally not a rip-off of Indiana Jones) had gotten famous from his exploits in Chagunitzu. Now his fame is fading and he is busily researching a new pyramid to raid, that is Paganitzu. The game starts having just entered the pyramid.

The game is like Sokoban in that it is played on a grid of tiles with items you can push around to solve problems. Unlike Sokoban there are hazards in each level that will kill you if you’re not careful. Spiders move quickly, usually hugging either the left or right wall and snakes spit fire at you if they catch sight of you. Your task is to collect all the keys so you can move through the pyramid to accomplish the greater goal of the story. In some parts of the levels you will find hints, parts of the story, or little jokes that add a bit extra to the experience.

CGA and EGA graphics are supported, with EGA looking reasonably nice but CGA not looking so hot for some of the more detailed graphics. Animations are pretty good in general with the exception of the player or enemies moving. Each entity sort of jerks a whole tile at a time, some with no animation at all. I suspect this is because it’s a tile based game. PC speaker is the only sound device supported, with only a few bleeps and bloops for various events, it’s not annoying but is totally optional.

The controls use the normal cursor arrow keys on the keyboard, so the control layout is generally fine. However I’ve found that the game doesn’t buffer key presses and doesn’t always accept input when you’d hope. This left me sometimes mashing the keyboard trying to move as fast as I could, but actually moving significantly slower instead. This made some puzzles harder to finish than they needed to be.

The levels and progression are generally well done, although there are a few levels that are out of place because they are easier or harder than they should be for that point in the game. The shareware episode I played today is 20 levels long, although I wasn’t able to complete that set in the time frame I had to play. The two registered episodes each have slightly different mechanics and hazards, so are refreshingly different from the shareware portion.

Despite the control issues I managed to almost complete the shareware episode in roughly 2 hours, getting stuck on level 19. Only because I couldn’t move fast enough to escape the spider and block it in. I did for the most part enjoy playing Paganitzu, and I recommend it to people who enjoy puzzle games.

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Numjump for DOS

Today’s game is another homebrew made by Daniel Remar in 2017. It’s quite interesting as I’d describe it as a turn-based puzzle platform game, an odd combination indeed. He wrote it using QBasic and has included the source code along with some binaries compiled for 16bit MS-DOS as well as 64bit windows (using QB64 as the compiler).

In technical terms the game is fairly basic, it’s essentially using a 40×25 text mode with 16 colours and the PC speaker for sound. Whilst simple, it’s very effective, and the game is quite nice to look at for a text mode game. Sound is quite sparse, with few effects at all, but they are appropriate and don’t become annoying the way some games can become. Looking at the code, this could be ported to anything with a decent Basic interpreter and a 40 column display mode.

What makes the game odd and interesting is the mechanics of it. Your character only really has two goals, collect gold and reach the exit. In order to do this you need to jump around a small level avoiding obstacles that trap or kill you. The player moves one step at a time. The jump mechanic is a bit hard to describe. You have a maximum jump power, which is the number of steps you can travel vertically. For each step vertically you take you can take a step horizontally left or right. Once out of steps you must fall to the ground. You can fall at any time in the process by pressing the down arrow.

It’s a bit tricky at first, but once you get the hang of moving around it works quite well.

The level design works well with these mechanics to make for a challenging but not punishing experience. If you do happen to fall foul of a trap, the level is simply reset without any further penalty. The traps are fairly basic, there are spikes, Laser barriers that can be toggled, and some moving obstacles where timing is critical. Some areas can be inaccessible until you’ve increased your jump power, and others require a bit of thought to find your way in, but in general the puzzles are solvable in a reasonably short period without being easy.

Numjump is fairly short, you can finish it within an hour, but the length feels just about right. You get just enough of each type of hazard and puzzle to feel satisfied, but not so much as to become repetitive. If you’ve finished the game, you can go looking for all the secret dots, or make an attempt at collecting all the gold for the reward of a secret level, one for each achievement. It’s fun and well designed, so I’d say it’s definitely worth a go. I downloaded it from the Dos Haven site here, the official site there is linked to the authors twitter account.

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MagiDuck for DOS

I was browsing the web recently when I stumbled across DOS Haven, A site devoted to home brew games made for MS-DOS machines. This is a welcome and quite unusual find as there isn’t much of a home brew scene for these machines as opposed to other platforms like the C64 or MSX which have a larger and thriving home brew community.

Though not featured on DOS Haven I found today’s game from a news item there. MagiDuck is an action platform game made for the IBM PC. It was made by Toni Svenstrîm with the latest beta release in 2016. It has especially low system requirements, only needing an 8088 @ 4.77 Mhz, CGA and 256K of RAM which covers pretty much almost any MS-DOS machine except those with MDA displays or small amounts of memory. The low system requirements come about partly because of the graphics mode used, which is a hacked text mode that allows for 80×50 with 16 colours similar but not the same as that used in Paku Paku.

Although the graphics are quite blocky due to the low resolution, the artwork is of quite high quality. Magiduck, the enemies and the levels are all colourful and cute. On the technical side the game animates quite smoothly on even minimal hardware and even manages vertical scrolling. Because early PCs didn’t have sound cards only PC speaker is supported, and the sound is fairly good for that device.

The game controls and responds quite well in a way that most PC platform games do. Although the key layout is a little different, z and x are used for jump and fire, it works just as well as the usual control and alt key layout. Magi jumps and moves as you’d expect, jumping around is fairly straight forward, which is good because the levels are quite vertical. Each level is basically a tower, you start at the bottom and work your way up to a star which represents the end.

I quite like the level design, like the sprites they are colourful and fun. There is some challenge, but not so hard as to be painfully difficult. Whilst they are quite narrow (a limitation of the engine is seems) there are a number of paths of varying difficulty through each level. You can spend time collecting treasure and keys from all the paths for extra points, or speed run the game for a time bonus.

Magiduck is technically very impressive and is very well designed and built. It does have some minor flaws, but generally they don’t impact getting enjoyment out of it. The hardware it can run on is very impressive, the original IBM PC was not considered capable of scrolling colourful graphics until later machines got much more powerful and the first EGA/VGA cards became common place. This game can do it on an original PC @ 4.77 Mhz and a CGA card. If you own an old machine this is certainly something you should give a try, you can find it on IndieDB here.

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Loader Larry for DOS

Today’s game was made by Soleau Software, originally released back in 1993. The company was mostly one person, William Soleau, who was a prolific producer of shareware for MS-DOS machines during the early 1990’s, and is still developing new games today.

Loader Larry can be considered a more advanced version of Block man as it has more game mechanics, although the puzzles aren’t necessarily harder. Interestingly both games came out in the same year, I haven’t seen anything to confirm this, but I assume Block man came first as it is the simpler one. I also noted that Taking Care of Business is very similar as well, which makes me wonder if these games are a clone of something older that I can’t think of or find.

Graphically Larry uses pretty much the same technology that all MS-DOS Soleau Software games did, EGA graphics at 640×350 resolution. This has unfortunately squished my screen shots a bit vertically, so I’ve had to scale them to appear as they would on screen. Artistically it’s a little better than Block man with better detail in the tiles, but both are comparable given they use the same technology. PC speaker sound is present but fairly basic.

The controls are pretty much the same as those found in Block man, the movement however has been slightly improved. You can now turn around without moving a tile, and can pick up blocks that are under another. This makes it easier to move around in general, but care still needs to be taken so you don’t get trapped.

I found Loader Larry to be a challenging and charming despite its technical simplicity. It’s just the right amount of game to fill a gap where you need a bit of entertainment and challenge without being so big you have to invest loads of time. That being said you might not find it re-playable once you solve all the puzzles. Soleau Software is still around, so if you have nostalgia for these games you can still get them at their website, where they still offer registration for the MS-DOS games for $8 US.

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Catacomb Abyss for DOS

Today’s game is quite unusual as it’s an early FPS game supporting EGA 16 colour graphics. It was released after Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, but isn’t a clone as it’s a sequel to the earlier game Catacomb 3D (1991). Both Catacomb 3D and Abyss were made using a earlier version of the Wolfenstein 3d engine, the first being made by id software for Softdisk and the second by staff at Softdisk using the same engine. So in that sense you could consider both to be a pre-cursor to Wolfenstein 3d technology wise.

The story is fairly simple and is a continuation of the first Catacomb 3d series. Nemesis, the antagonist from the previous game is now obviously dead, but his evil minions that are still around have built a memorial mausoleum in the town cemetery and are infesting the area. The local town-folk obviously aren’t too happy about it, so knowing you defeated Nemesis himself they send you in to clean up.

Graphically it’s quite impressive for EGA, artistically the sprites and wall textures are fairly well done for 16 colours. Performance wise the engine performs quite well under dosbox, which was configured at 3000 cycles which is roughly equivalent to a 20Mhz 386. I’d expect it to also be quite playable on 286 machines with the exception of slower ones. The engine however isn’t perfect, monsters can get close enough to you that they are no longer displayed. This tended to happen when they spawned very close and made it quite difficult to kill them. I found using the Xterminators usually helped. I also noticed that the texture mapping on the walls sometimes appeared a bit off, and that text on the walls was often hard to read. Despite the faults, the game looks nice and is quite atmospheric.

Sound support defaults to the PC speaker, which sounds ok. You can switch the game over to using Ad Lib sound, but the user interface and documentation don’t make it clear that it’s available and how to turn it on. I played for ages before realising there was another option. Once you manage to get it working the Ad Lib sound effects are quite effective, but they are loud and some of them are a little crackly. This could be down to imperfect emulation of the FM chip in dosbox, but I suspect it’s the pseudo-digital sound effects that are the cause.

The levels are quite short, but still big enough you can get lost. They rely on destructible walls quite a bit, which fortunately are usually easy to spot. They hide them as blocks that are different to those around them or a short and easily recognisable pattern. With infinite basic shots you should be able to find them fairly easily. There are doors with keys, but they don’t have a nice opening animation instead simply vanishing instead. Which could be the reason they aren’t used very much.

As you work through the game there are a variety of settings, each with their own graphic style, and typical monsters found there. You start off in the “towne” cemetery and work your way into the mausoleum and then crypt for Nemesis. For some reason not clearly explained you then end up deeper underground and then the segment that I’m up to, the aqueduct. On the up side each setting is fairly different visually, and some like the aqueduct change things up with different monsters.

There isn’t a huge variety of monsters in each level, but they get progressively stronger and have more variety in later levels. The basic monsters use melee attacks primarily, which can be a problem if they get too close. Zombies, which appear in the earlier levels, are not visible until they climb out of the ground. This sometimes happens when they are already too close to see, so you may need to use a Xterminator as moving away seems futile. In later levels I’ve seen some more interesting enemies such as floating wizards that shoot fireballs at you, large beasts, and what can only be described as aquatic zombies that hide under the water popping up every now and then.

There’s only really one weapon, a fireball that you can rapidly fire. You can’t charge it like the original 2d game, but you can make up for that with volume of fire. The two spells that you get aren’t really different weapons, but rather variations on the basic fireball. The Xterminator previously mentioned basically just fires standard fireballs in a circle around you, useful when many enemies are close, or you want to hit one you can’t see. The Zapper essentially just sends out a pulse of rapid fire and is less useful as you can achieve the same rate of fire manually.

Controls are fairly similar to those in Wolfenstein 3d, but not quite as refined and polished. Turning and moving are as you’d expect, but the control turning faster is the tab or v key, which can be a little cumbersome to reach. The alternative is to turn much slower, giving enemies more time to hurt you. This aside the controls work fairly well.

Catacomb Abyss is the only one of the series that was ever available as shareware, consequently it’s the only one easy to download. From what I’ve played, it’s actually quite decent although a little clunky in some aspects like the controls. Still it has great atmosphere and having short levels means you don’t get as lost as you might with something like Wolf3d. You can buy this along with the rest of the series on the Good old Games website for I think about $8 US dollars.

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Mad Painter for DOS

I’ve been away on my usual holiday break and recently got home. Whilst I was away at my parents place it was really quite intensely hot, like 40+ degrees Celsius in the shade. It’s not unusual to get a few days like that where they live, but the heat seemed to linger for longer this year. In heat like that (and without air conditioning) you can’t really do all that much, most people usually just try to keep cool and lie down during the worst heat of the day.

It’s usually a good time to sit and play a game, I usually favour something that doesn’t tax my brain too much which leads us to today’s game. Mad Painter is a fairly simple arcade style maze game. Essentially you are driving a paint truck for your city, painting the road markings as you drive around. You have to paint all the roads to progress to the next level, avoiding a few cars driving around. You’re scored based on how much of the level you paint. I’m playing the shareware episode which only has one city.

The game has EGA graphics and PC speaker sound support. The level is larger than the screen and scrolls around impressively smoothly even on lower speed hardware. In fact you’ll probably want to go for an older 286 machine, an upgraded XT or AT or equivalent cycles in Dosbox. The game runs quite fast even on slower hardware, playing ok at ~500 Dosbox cycles, and probably optimally at around 1000 (about a 286 @ 12Mhz using TopBench to benchmark). Despite this in game speed, the menus and transition screens take much more time to draw and animate. Looking at the graphics in game I wonder if it is using a hacked text mode to achieve the speed, and the other screens use a genuine graphics mode. Sound is pretty basic, but not bad, and you can turn it off if you don’t like it.

The game controls in much the same manner as Pac-man, allowing you to anticipate a turn before you arrive. The maze however is no-where near as dense, so there are fewer places to turn and more potential to be trapped by enemies. Luckily there are only two cars which are however driven by maniacs who speed around like they are driving a super car. It is their speed which makes them hazardous, as they drive randomly and will not seek you out.

Mad Painter serves its purpose well, it’s a fun little distraction that you can quickly play and not have to commit too much effort or time.

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Heros: The Sanguine Seven for DOS

Today’s game is called Heros: the Sanguine Seven and was made for MS-DOS back in 1993 by Jeffrey Fullerton. He originally sold the game directly himself, but after some minor updates (including correcting the spelling of Heroes) a shareware version was published by Safari software in 1994. It’s an unusual platform game styled after comic book heroes and villains. Some super villains have escaped from gaol, so a band of seven heroes are selected to re-capture them. Today I’m playing the registered version as downloaded from the RGB classic DOS games site, you can also get the game from the authors website here.

It features EGA graphics, but unfortunately suffers from programmers art, it’s not really all that bad, but it’s not a great example of EGA graphics. I totally sympathise as my own graphical efforts suffer from a similar fate. On the flip side the graphic engine is coded exceptionally well, the scrolling is very smooth and the game performs well, even on the equivalent of something like a 286. I also found it cool that cartoon style biff and pow word art float up in the air when ever something takes a hit.

The game supports PC speaker for the main sound effects and Ad Lib FM music. The sound effects are pretty much as good as you can expect from the PC speaker. The music is nicely implemented, but the author chose classical music which is a little odd, but somehow it fits. I suspect the choice of music is partly due to it being royalty free and the difficulty in creating your own.

The game plays much like any other platformer with a few unique twists. The heroes gather in a control room reminiscent of the justice league where you select one to take into the current stage. If your hero happens to run out of strength (your health essentially) a bubble protects them from further harm and you choose another hero to rescue them . You have to rescue every fallen hero before you can finish a stage and the game is over if there are none left in the control room.

The heroes have different special abilities and weaknesses, such as Gumwad sticking to walls and Leadmans inability to swim . Each hero also has some basic stats like in a RPG such as their maximum health and jump height. You can upgrade these stats at the control room with Gems that you find. So as you progress through the game your characters get stronger. The only thing that took me by surprise was the limited ammo that carries across levels, it is easy to run out.

I found the controls work fairly well, but in the context of many of the levels I found it difficult to navigate without taking damage. The level design unfortunately doesn’t work as well, there are many dead ends with no rewards, I ended up wandering around the levels aimlessly never finding the exit. The small screen space makes seeing upcoming hazards difficult to see and react to, unless of course you’ve memorised the level. Enemies continue to shoot and move even when quite a distance off screen, which means you have to dodge incoming fire from quite a distance away. I actually couldn’t finish any of the levels, luckily the archive I got the game in included a save for every level in the game, so I was able to try out more than the first one. Practise and moving more cautiously did seem to help me progress further.

Heros: The Sanguine Seven is certainly very unique for it’s time. There are many really good ideas in the design, such as multiple heroes and the control room. Unfortunately the level design lets it down a little, there aren’t enough health pickups for the amount of damage you take, and there are too many paths with no reward at the end. That being said there is some clever design in the levels and it is quite fun to play. I quite like the quirky heroes and the mechanic around each of their special abilities. The author made it freeware back in 2005, so there’s little reason to not give this unique game a try.

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Space Chase for DOS

Today we’re looking at Space Chase, a little known platform game made in 1993 by Safari Software, one of the first games that they released. It features Jason Storm, a former Marine that takes on dangerous missions. You’re given a mission to stop the organisation known as Evil Guys inc. from taking over the planetary government. It is an platform game much like older games such as Duke Nukem and Dark Ages.

The game uses EGA graphics, which is quite unusual for a game released in 1993. I believe this is because they were supporting old 286 machines, which whilst obsolete, were still common. The game performs well enough that it would probably be playable on a faster 286 machine, but would struggle on the slower machines running at less than 16Mhz.

The sprites and backgrounds are quite detailed compared to say Duke Nukem, but in some ways less appealing. I still quite like the artwork, although many others don’t seem to. Animations look decent and smooth with plenty of frames for each animated sprite.

The only annoyance is with the scrolling, it’s smooth enough, but the distance from the screen edge is shorter moving to the right than it is when moving left. This makes moving right a bit more difficult as you don’t see hazards until you’re nearly on top of it.

Sound effects come from the PC speaker, and are pretty much what you’d expect. Music support is included for Ad lib and compatible cards. The music isn’t quite what you’d expect to find in a platform game, it’s quite relaxed and suites the different pace. I quite liked the music and the mood it set.

If you read the marketing material for the game you’d be expecting a fast-paced action game, perhaps something like Duke Nukem. But Space Chase isn’t as fast paced, although there are action elements and some aspects are clearly inspired by games like Duke Nukem, such as the health pickup which suspiciously looks like a futuristic soft drink can.

The controls are fairly tight, but the jump mechanic is more like what you might find on a console game. For most DOS platform games your jump height is identical no-matter how long or short you hold the jump key. Space Chase on the other hand replicates what usually happens on consoles, the duration of the button press controls the height of the jump. It’s not a bad mechanic, it’s actually quite useful, but as I am more used to DOS games it took a little time to adjust.

As I said before the game play is more relaxed than other more action focused platform games. There are some puzzle elements, such as finding a security node for activating a lift, but it’s not really a puzzle game either. You could think of it as Duke Nukem with simple puzzles added and the action toned down.

There is a limited amount of ammunition for your gun, so you often have to use it sparingly, or simply take a hit from an enemy rather than use a bullet. Avoidance is often the best tactic, and some areas filled with enemies can be skipped altogether. If you run out of bullets you can literally get stuck in some sections as shooting a security node can be necessary for progress.

The level design is pretty decent, exploring them to find score items, ammunition or health is generally a pleasant experience. The only hassle is a few jumps that are difficult because of the low ceiling height. There are areas that are dead ends that you wouldn’t normally need to explore, but they usually contain something as a reward. The difficulty settings change the enemies that appear, with easy have far fewer enemies than normal or hard.

Whilst Space Chase has some minor issues, it is quite a fun platform game to play. It’s relaxed without lacking action, but also not focused on shooting down all the enemies. I played about three quarters of the shareware version and quite enjoyed it. Unfortunately there is no legit way to get the registered version, but the shareware version is available on the Classic Dos Games website.

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Snarf for DOS

Today’s game is another one made by Everett Kaser, a shareware author who happens to still be making new games. I wrote about another of his games a short while ago, Hero’s heart. This one named Snarf was made in 1988 originally, released in 1990 and with updated versions of the game coming out up until 1993. It’s an arcade style game in which you need to collect treasure and keys, and avoid enemies known as snarfs.

Like Hero’s Heart, this has high resolution EGA graphics (640x350x16) that allows for larger levels without having to implement scrolling, which wasn’t easy on old PC hardware. The sprites are drawn nicely although there isn’t really much in the way of animation, but what’s there works. The sound is again from the PC speaker and consists of a few bleeps and bloops, it’s ok and you can turn it off if you don’t like the audio.

Game-play wise it’s very much a score attack arcade style game. The main way you get points is of course collecting treasure, which is multiplied by the numbers of ‘tags’ you have left at the end of a level. The main hazard is of course the snarfs who spawn from nests located around the map. if you happen to run into the snarfs they take your tags which is essentially your health. There are usually a fair few running around, and they spawn endlessly so it’s best to avoid them if you can.

The controls seem to be inspired by games like Robotron which allow you to fire your weapon in a different direction to that you are moving. This proves to be a very handy feature, although I’m yet to get good at it. You can only have one or two shots in the air depending on what you set, so it’s best to only fire when you know the shot will hit something in a short time. Otherwise you could be waiting before you can shoot again. Again it is generally better to avoid the snarfs rather than shoot them if you can.

The snarfs themselves seem to be reasonably intelligent, being able to avoid shots, find a path to you and generally trap you. I’ve found myself getting trapped by the blighters and having to try and shoot as many as I can, or simply try to out smart them.

I found Snarf to be quite fun, but didn’t get too far into the levels because I didn’t have enough time to really practice and work at being better. It is mostly the controls that I need to work on learning as I hadn’t played a game with a scheme like that before. There are 50 levels and a level editor included, so there is no shortage of content level wise. There are some downsides, such as not getting any more than a single life, but you can select the level you start on, so you don’t have to play the same ones repeatedly.

Gemini of Ancient DOS Games also did a video about Snarf quite some time ago, you can find it here. The game is available as freeware from the RGB classic DOS games website here.