Screenshot of Booty: The Remake
SalvaKantero of Play On Retro released a new game just before Christmas, although I was unable to post an announcement here as I was away visiting my family for Christmas. Firebird’s original release of Booty was nothing special and it had a number of flaws, but SalvaKantero thought he could develop a new, improved version – and he has certainly succeeded in doing that! Booty: The Remake is much better than the original game in every way.
If you haven’t played Booty before, you’re a cabin boy on board a pirate ship, and you must collect 125 pieces of treasure scattered around twenty rooms in the ship. It’s a platform game, and you have to avoid contact with cutlass-wielding pirates and various animals, and collect numbered keys in each room to open doors in the right sequence. You can download Booty: The Remake from itch.io.
Gold Maze
Screenshot of Gold Maze
RetroVynZ has released a clever little puzzle game called Gold Maze. You are exploring a labyrinth and you have to collect as much treasure as you can. The maze consists of a 7×7 grid of tiles, and the puzzle element comes from pushing these tiles around to form passages to enable you to reach the treasures, in a similar manner to Pipe Mania. The quicker you can collect the treasures, the more you’ll earn, but each treasure will disappear after a few turns, so there’s also some strategy involved in how to move the tiles. The game is written entirely in BASIC, but it is very well presented indeed. You can download Gold Maze from itch.io.
Robert Small has reviewed Emlyn Hughes International Soccer. Astonishingly, despite this game being widely regarded as a classic and one of the best football games for the CPC, no one has reviewed it until now!
The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor
Title screen of The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor
Stefan Vogt has released a new text adventure called The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor, which is set in a remote Scottish manor in 1986. You are Thomas King, and you and your wife Cora are staying there for Christmas – but as you explore the history of the manor, you begin to uncover a dark secret that goes back centuries.
There are three possible endings – good, neutral and bad – and unlike most text adventures, interaction with characters takes place using a menu-based system similar to the ones found in point-and-click adventures where you choose what your character will say next. A physical release from poly.play is planned, but in the meantime, you can download The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor from itch.io – although it requires CP/M Plus and it will only load on a CPC6128 or a Plus machine with at least 128KB of RAM.
The Cult
Screenshot of The Cult
Tartessos Games has released a new game for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum called The Cult, or El Culto in Spanish. You have travelled to a village in the mountains whose inhabitants are living under a constant blanket of fear, and your goal is to uncover the source of this terror. The game has been developed using the Mojon Twins’ MK1 engine, and you can download it from itch.io.
New reviews
I have reviewed seven games, six of which are entries in the recent 2023 #CPCRetroDev Game Creation Contest:
There’s been lots of news about new and forthcoming games in the last few days, so here’s a summary of what I’ve learnt.
Kung Fu Master GX
Ayor61 of GGP has released a version of Kung-Fu Master that has been modified to make use of the enhanced palette of the GX4000 and Plus machines. There’s a new overscan title screen, the display and player sprites have been redrawn by Maître Joe, and you can choose to play the game with infinite lives. You can download Kung Fu Master GX from GameJolt.
Octopus 21
Kung Fu Master GX isn’t the only new release from GGP. Ayor61 has also released the final version of Octopus 21 – a cartridge version of the Nintendo Game & Watch handheld game of the same name that was first previewed at the Amstrad Eterno festival in 2021. You can download Octopus 21 from GameJolt.
You may be thinking, “Wasn’t a conversion of Octopus released a few months ago?” Indeed there was. Originally, Ayor61 was working with Titan (Éric Cubizolle) to develop the game, but towards the end of 2022, the project appeared abandoned. Kukulcan of CPC-POWER decided that Titan’s beautiful graphics should not go to waste, so both of them collaborated to work on their own version of Octopus, which was released last July – and now, several months later, Ayor61 has completed work on his version.
Yewdow
The mysterious Japanese developer Inufuto released his latest game, Yewdow, for the Amstrad CPC and many other 8-bit machines a few days ago. Unusually, Yewdow features Mode 0 graphics; all of Inufuto’s previous games on the CPC use four-colour Mode 1 graphics. You have to guide a car around a screen by placing arrows to make it change direction and collect coloured flags – an interesting combination of arcade action and trying to work out the best routes to take. You can download Yewdow from Inufuto’s site, although it’s only available as a CDT cassette image from there; if you want a disc image, head over to CPCRulez instead.
Booty: The Remake
SalvaKantero of PlayOnRetro has been working on a remake of the Firebird budget game Booty. He has posted an announcement and video on X that it is virtually completed and is in the beta testing phase. A previous post on X contains a video that will give you an idea of what it looks and plays like. It’s much more beautiful than the original game!
The Heart of Salamanderland
Finally, Juan José Martínez announced on the CPCWiki forum that he is developing a new platform game for the Amstrad CPC called The Heart of Salamanderland. So far, there are very few details, but Juan has said that his young son is responsible for writing the background story. He’s posted a video on SDF Social showing his work in progress so far, which looks very similar to one of the sections in another of his games, Golden Tail.
Screenshot of Kung Fu Master GX
Screenshot of Octopus 21
Screenshot of Yewdow
Screenshot of The Heart of Salamanderland
#CPCRetroDev 2023 results
The #CPCRetroDev 2023 awards ceremony took place yesterday (Friday 17th November 2023) and it was streamed live on YouTube. Paulina’s Potions by Leosoft took an early lead, but Sugar City by VoxelTower and Alloy Box by CNGSoft joined the fight in a three-way battle – and towards the end, Alloy Box managed to gain the lead and never looked back. Congratulations to CNGSoft for finally winning #CPCRetroDev at his ninth attempt, and to everyone else who participated!
However, there is some sad news, in that after 11 years, this year’s edition of #CPCRetroDev will be the last one to be organised by the University of Alicante. Now it’s up to the Amstrad CPC community to ensure the competition continues, and the #CPCRetroDev staff will support anyone who wants to organise further contests.
Bomb Jack remake
Viewers who were watching Xyphoe’s livestream last Friday night were treated to an exclusive demo of Anthony Flack’s remake of Bomb Jack! The version that Xyphoe played (subtitled the Extra Sugar Edition) features music and sound effects that are remarkably close to the coin-op game, and it’s fully playable now. It will require 128KB of RAM, and Anthony said that it is around 95% complete, although there are still a few bugs to sort out and features to be added, and he expects it to be ready for release by Christmas or the New Year.
You can watch Xyphoe playing the game below, or alternatively, watch it on YouTube (the gameplay starts at 4:33:21).
#CPCRetroDev 2023
The deadline for submission of entries to the #CPCRetroDev 2023 contest was 23:00 UTC yesterday (Friday 3rd November 2023). 30 entries were submitted, which isn’t as high as recent editions of the contest, but it’s enough to keep any Amstrad CPC gamer busy for some time playing all of them! You can download all the entries from itch.io, and the awards ceremony is expected to be held on Friday 17th November 2023 at 18:00 UTC.
Screenshot of Tenebra 2
Almost a year after releasing Tenebra for the Amstrad CPC (which received a rating of 8 out of 10 on this site), Haplo has released the sequel, Tenebra 2. If you haven’t played the first game yet, it’s a puzzle game in which you have to guide the player around a dark dungeon and find the exit – but the player cannot enter dark areas and must use braziers and torches to find their way around. Tenebra 2 contains 35 new dungeons for you to solve, and you can download it from itch.io.
Xyphoe’s Nightmare
Title screen of Xyphoe's NightmareXyphoe’s Nightmare is a platform game that was released exclusively on Antstream in February 2022 and wasn’t available to download anywhere else. However, the author, Yellow Belly, announced in a comment on Xyphoe’s Amstream last Friday that I have now been given permission for Xyphoe’s Nightmare to be made available for downloading, so feel free to read my review of Xyphoe’s Nightmare on this site and click on the title in the review to download the game!
Ghost Trick Delirium Edition
Screenshot of Ghost Trick Delirium Edition
Ayor61 has released a special edition of his recent GX4000 game Ghost Trick in time for Halloween, entitled the Delirium Edition. In this new version, instead of playing Arthur, the knight from Ghosts’n Goblins, you play Mario, and you must leap from platform to platform collecting coins and avoiding various familiar enemies from Super Mario World, such as Banzai Bill, Chargin’ Chuck, and the Thwomp. You can download it from Game Jolt. Let’s hope Nintendo don’t find out about it!
