Villordsutch reviews Ooze on the ZX Spectrum…
In this latest release from Andy Johns, Monty Mole has been allowed to take a break for five minutes, after his jaunt through the haunted tombs of the Great Pyramids, and our latest hero has seeped through the cracks and revealed itself to be nothing more than a globule of ooze!
Firing up the AGD which is turning out to be an extremely valuable tool for the ZX Spectrum, Andy Johns has once again delivered a platformer in which he’s not only has brought an original hero to our 8-bit gaming arena, but this time he’s brought some tunes along with him!
For those of us familiar with the indie game VVVVVV from 2010 or even pushing it a wee bit further – to the extreme – Flippin’ Horace also from 2010, the game play of Ooze may seem ever so slightly familiar with our protagonist, which is having to maneuver past numerous obstacles by using the power of politely informing Sir Newton where he can stick his apple. You guide our sticky mass through a network of twisting-piped corridors, moving left and right and dodging meanies. Though this may sound like a staple platform game already, but with the ‘jump’ actual switching the heroes gravity to make it rapidly ascend towards the roof or descend towards the floor, the game suddenly becomes that wee bit smarter; if not trickier.
Along with timing spinning nasties, red-bolts of electricity, blasting-plumes of acid and traversing stalactites and stalagmites of corrosive death, you also have to plan your ascents and descents. For if you get one wrong you could drop onto a undulating spinning creature of doom, or plant yourself into something rather sharp! This is never good for a blob of ooze.
Andy has kept the basic elements of a cracking platform game firmly locked-in to Ooze as you’ve got a good looking world, keys to find which will further you progress, doom around numerous corners and many nerves being tested due to timing of spinning, clanking, chewing pieces of mechanical death; each looking to end a blob of oozes day rather badly. All of this is done with some excellent animation, not just for the blob and his tiny eyes, but numerous other things throughout including the red sparks, and green mist. The only animation that is missing is a decent death animation for said blob of ooze! Macabre I know, but I’d like to see the little bleeder get a decent death scene.
The main issue of the two previous titles from Andy was the fact they were lacking music and meaty sound-effects and here in this release he’s gone above and beyond by calling in some brilliant people. Thanks to Migeul/CPU, with additional code from David Saphier, they’ve brought in a corking Main Menu opening tune to Ooze, then we get to the in-game tension building music from Rayden/Vitali; all of these tunes add something wonderful to an already fantastic title.
Ooze is a fantastic game to play. It is a true ZX Spectrum platformer, built in the 21st Century, with excellent graphics, animation, music and gameplay. If I had the ability to take this back in time, I’d be expecting to see a Your Sinclair Megagame on this.
I spoke with Andy about Ooze and his career in gaming :-
Andy JohnsVillordsutch: Andy I’m guessing after your first couple of games on the ZX Spectrum, which made people sit up and smile, you’re not wholeheartedly new to the scene? What’s your history in the world of gaming?
Andy Johns: It’s been crazy honestly. I wanted to make some games that I would enjoy playing and have fun making. I didn’t expect anyone to like them or play them, let alone get interviewed about or see review of. I started in the games industry about 20 years ago, working for Electronic Arts as a junior artist and progressed from there, now I’m currently a Principal Technical Artist at NaturalMotion/Zynga. I’ve worked on titles like Harry Potter, Burnout, F1, Clumsy Ninja and most recently Dawn of Titans on mobile.
V: You turned to Monty Mole for your first two releases this year – did you initially set out to make a Monty Mole game or did this come about after the game had been plotted out?
AJ: Originally I wasn’t making a Monty game, but my own character called Cheeky Cheetah, so along the same lines, but I loved the Monty games and decided to change over. I still have the sprites for Cheeky so one day he might get a game of his own.
V: Did you hear anything from the original Monty Mole creators regarding your releases? Did Peter Harrap drop you any emails of “Gratz!”?
AJ: I did get a retweet from one of the owners of Gremlin so that was nice, a small nod from them. Nothing from Peter ☹
V: Your new game Ooze is now available to download, which has a totally new hero…a blob of slime! How long have you been working on this release?
AJ: I started Ooze as soon as I released Temple of Lost Souls, I was working on trying new gameplay ideas. I love platforms and AGD does them so well so I keep wanting to spice things up a bit. I really enjoyed making the Ooze move and animate it worked so well, making the levels was harder, there were times when other people had to spur me on to keep going, eventually I found my stride with it. This was a harder game to make than the Monty ones.
V: This platformer has in amongst it’s play a fair few pieces of animation and some splendid music, is there anything that stands out in the game that you’re proud of and you can’t wait for the gamers to stumble across?
AJ: The animation was definitely fun to do, but it used a lot of sprites and a lot of memory on the move code which is partly why there are so few different enemy types. I just hope they enjoy the experience, it’s something different, with the help of David Saphier the menu and the music really set it off; it’s a much more polished game
V: As you’ve developed your Monty games over these past few months and now released Ooze onto the ZX Spectrum world, what huge things have you learnt that you wish you could send a few months back to yourself, that may have saved a few hair pulling moments?
AJ: Every game has been a learning experience, if anything I’m getting more comfortable with AGD knowing what it can and can’t do. I’m much faster at developing the games now the game play for Ooze took a few days, the majority of the time on this game was the screens and getting the right look. It was hard designing a game for a character that didn’t have to jump.
V: You’ve had your previous two Monty releases sold as physical cassettes via Bumfungaming and soon Ooze will be too. How does it feel to see your game on classic cassette in the 21st Century?
AJ: Getting my own game on cassette was amazing, I was over the moon when George wanted to publish it.
V: Lastly what will be your next release? If you can’t reveal the ins and outs perhaps just give us the title?
AJ: Next release is undecided, I’m playing with a couple of ideas but obviously I want to step it up and make something new or different to what has come before. I know there will be at least one more Monty game, but at the moment there is nothing definite. However if people want another Ooze then maybe I’ll do that.
You can download for free Monty’s Honey Run and Monty Mole and the Temple of Lost Souls for free here, though if you like your physical cassette you can also buy them from Bumfungaming.com.
Ooze is now available to download here. If you don’t have a ZX Spectrum but would like to play these games there are a number of emulators out there from FUSE to Spectaculator, or you can play it online at ZX Basic.
Rating: 9/10
