COPYBARA by Edward Toovey
COPYBARA for ZX Spectrum 16/48K by Edward Toovey
"You thought the beaver was a rodent of unusual size? The capybara is twice that big—the biggest rodent on Earth. These impressive semi-aquatic mammals are found throughout much of northern and central South America, though a small invasive population has been seen in Florida. They’re closely related to guinea pigs and rock cavies, and more distantly related to chinchillas and agouti." - National Geographic
So now you know what we're up to.
The previous CGC winner sent in this Sir David Attenborough inspired game for this year's competition. And what a game it is. It seems Mr Toovey is quite an artist, the capybara on the loading screen is beautiful (yes, I know about ZX Paintbrush and other bmp to scr utilities, but I'd rather think he did it himself), but even better are the 16x16 pixel capybaras with subtle differences you'll see in the game.
The zip contains a tzx file and a nice picture of a cassette inlay with playing instructions. You just load the tzx and go, no complicated emulator experiments required. Note: It didn't work in Fuse (failed to recognise the SPACE key), but works fine in ZEsarUX and Spectaculator.
You (me) are the owner of a zoo and the villain in the story (Dr Genome) has stolen your beloved Cliff, you guessed it, a cuddly and loving capybara that you have to rescue from several evil cloning centres.
Next up is the authorial genius: The next screen introduces us to Cliff and his clones, who are only slightly different thanks to subtle changes. We need to be very clear about the characteristics of the real capybara, because in the game we have to identify Cliff in a frantic race against time. Congratulations on making such good use of the pixel to create different characters, your Scrambled Smile order is on its way.
(Yes, you noticed and I noticed. There is a b instead of a p. No imperfections, no crap.)
And here we go to save Cliff !!!
There is no threat of the Abu Simbel Profanation and its legendary killer drop at the start, the first screen is very easy and the difficulty increases as the levels progress.
However, things will get complicated and Dr Genome will achieve his evil goal if we are not very focused. Here the game attacks the sensibilities of the player, who will not, should not, cannot abandon the innocent Cliff !
Find and select Cliff as quickly as possible, but with many more capybaras, you need the eyesight and speed of a predator.
Speaking of speed, the game is very well written in BASIC. He really managed to deep-fry the ice cream. Fast and fluid. Instant key recognition, it's nice to play like that. If you fail, it's your fault. Only a few simple beeps accompany the game. But in my opinion it doesn't really need more. It's an uncomplicated game, but I've returned to it many times because it's somewhat engaging. I can smell the MSG from here...
A capibara named Cliff…. Now where is the cliffhanger for part 2?
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