Bloodwych

Copyright : Image Works | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Bloodwych is still classed as one of the best role playing/maze games to ever grace the home computer but many people prefer the classic Dungeon Master on the Atari ST and 16-bit platforms. The story is much the same, you are trapped in a dungeon and it?s your job to find a way out using the skills of four men and women, these must be selected wisely or you could find yourself in the stomach of an evil beast before the end of the night.

Graphics

We have seen a fair amount of games using the same style but all of these have only ever been seen on the 16-bit range of home computers such as the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga. After loading Bloodwych we were more than pleasantly surprised, the graphics are superb and easily show what the CPC is capable of.
The maze has been rendered perfectly with no major bugs in the engine what so ever, the game moves quickly and smoothly with some great variation in the corridors of the dungeon and plenty of detail on offer throughout the game. There are no "characters" on screen as such so the game cannot be judged in the same way as most of the others at CPC Zone but we certainly think that a lot of effort has gone into the construction of this game, even the inventory and player select screens look superb.

Sound

Sound on the other hand is a massive let down, given that the game takes up the bulk of a CPC disk and probably a massive amount of cassette run time it?s more likely that Mirrorsoft simply couldn?t find enough space to store the extra information or of course it could be the lack of physical RAM after forcing the wonderful maze onto the CPC screen. Shame though as this would be a perfect conversion if it did have some kind of sound.

Gameplay

All those that love this type of role playing game will be in heaven, the CPC more than copes with the graphical demand the game requires and with no major problems in the coding this is a delight to play.
Those that don?t like this type of game on the other hand would probably do better to simply avoid it, looking at the screen shots you would be forgiven for thinking it was a Doom clone but believe me it?s nothing like the fast pace of Doom and readers shouldn?t go rushing to download while expecting that level of gameplay.
All in all a very good game by Mirrorsoft that easily shows the power of the CPC and probably pissed a few of your friends off at the time of release!