Strangeloop (1984)

I did the Jack Kirby style cover art/title screen.

Name:Strangeloop
Number:201
Year:1984
Publisher:Virgin Games
Developer:Gang of Five
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:4/5
Time:2 hours 0 minutes
Won:No (81W/65L)

It's a tale as old as robots themselves, a robot factory (IN SPACE) goes wrong, and you're sent in to set it right again. Only this time it's from a pair of companies you can't mention in public anymore. Strangeloop seemed interesting to me, so I figured it might be a good game to fire up now that I've come back to chronological games.

This was released on Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX and ZX Spectrum. Of these, I played the C64 and CPC versions. Speccy is the original. Curiously, there are significant differences between the two in level design and the controls. The C64 version controlled absolutely horrendously, the CPC version less so. Trust me, the C64 version controls like absolute chaos, even when you understand how the system works, you're still fighting it every step of the way. It's a very complex system with a lot of weight and momentum to it, unfortunately should you as much as tap the joystick in either direction you always seem to go much further than you want to, to say nothing of bouncing off the walls.

Meanwhile, here the system is mercifully just a good but not amazing microcomputer control system. Awkward, you can really only do one input at a time. Compared to the C64 version mana from heaven, to everything else, crap with a capital k.

Owing to unavoidable technical problems, this image has some blurring going on.

Strangeloop is a single screen platformer masquerading as a shooter. One of those proto-metroidvanias. You go between screens via tubes, it's generally obvious which is which via the minimap down below and which tubes are in the walls. To begin with, and after every death, the player selects where he spawns. Note, it doesn't show where the traps or enemies are, and while you can use this to go around some obstacles, it isn't worth it.

Movement is done with the joystick. Left and right move left and right. Up jumps. Down does nothing. You move a bit too much even with a slight tap of either direction, which makes me suspect I'm missing something by using a keyboard joystick. Sadly I can't stick in an actual joystick at the moment, as I'm on a different computer than usual and despite having two good candidates for playing around with this, don't seem to work here.

When you jump, you reach a certain amount of distance, stop, then sink like a stop, be it whether you jump as high as you can or as low as you can. I hate this system, it feels like an artificial bandaid on something that never should have been a problem to begin with.

This is one of those things you can't shoot.

Shooting is tedious and boring. You don't shoot robots, anything that looks interesting tears you apart like a horror movie, does something else bad to you, or is what passes for a friendly in this game. Instead, you shoot bits of debris. You get about five shots on-screen at once at a good rate of fire, you'll notice but won't complain.

Instead, shooting is boring. These bits of debris pop up every other room. I don't know if the version I'm playing jacks up the ammo and health count, but I'm not going to complain. It's boring either way. Debris goes up and down, you aim at it in the right way and hope your shot hits it. Aiming up is annoying, you aim up, but you also jump. Taking out all the debris causes the room to become clear, leave even one and when you return it's back to normal. Undoubtedly a memory saving measure, keeping the room size down in memory. Just make sure everything's dead before you leave. Or just dodge them and never have the problem to begin with.

Finally, pressing P pauses, and you can save and load this way. Pressing esc or R quits, which is not very helpful. Since saving is to a tape and there doesn't seem to be a way to deactivate the pause, this isn't very helpful.

These are what you can actually shoot. Exciting.

You can also move around via the jet cycle, which is easy to find. It moves around in the air getting stuck on the environment much like you can. You never really have any problems with speed, this just means there's no tedious jumping around. This was basically how I played it for most of the time. It does reveal a major problem with the way this controls.

The player can very easily get stuck on some walls. Now, you would do this because this is the kind of game that puts the path forward behind a secret wall or door. You can only back out of the wall/ceiling/floor at this point. This doesn't just happen in esoteric situations, this can sometimes happen just getting out of an area normally. It's worse when you have to walk.

Getting to the HUD, we have mostly self-explanatory stuff. The mini-map shows the area around you, you'll need to get one off the internet or make your own for the whole game. Fuel is for the jet cycle, it slowly drains. Oxygen is technically your health, it reaches zero and you're dead. It's further decreased by leaks in your suit, patches slowly stop the leaks. Leaks are what happen when you get hit by debris or a robot. No mercy invulnerability.

The arrow is pointing towards the control room, what I believe is your ultimate objective. Finally, left is your inventory, opened by pressing space, which also exits it. Ctrl activates whatever your cursor is over, the player starts with the very useful item called "Exit Jet Cycle", which exits the jet cycle.

Not the most interesting of the traps, but without the jet cycle you couldn't get there.

To make things more interesting, the game has traps and hostile robots. You get crushers, acid pits, and beach balls which dissolve your matter stream or something. Mostly avoidable, except for the times they spawn right next to an exit. That's generally the rule this game's enemy placement follows. Conveyor belts move you in one direction, thankfully I had enough fuel for the jet cycle to avoid these for most of the game.

Despite the very boring general gameplay and lack of sound contributing to an atmosphere I would describe as wasting time and aware of it, there is promise here. I like the level, it's big, it's open, and there's puzzles to do. To begin with, I need to find welding equipment...oh, and something to shield my character's eyes, because just using the welding equipment kills me. Elsewhere, there's a puzzle where you bring a robot a fish, dunno why logic is suddenly entering into this.

But that really doesn't overwhelm the game around it. Yes, puzzles can be fun and clever, for instance, giving a very depressed robot a pleasure circuit, it's not really worth it going back and forth across a 10x25 sized map that's an endless confusing mess of pipes, conveyor belts and just everything. It feels like every bit of thought that went into this game solely went into the puzzle design, everything else is done randomly. Perhaps I would have tried to beat it at another time, but the time it came I'm just tired of busywork.

Weapons:

Basic weapon, better than most, but because of the chosen enemies, incredibly hard to hit anything. 1/10

Enemies:

Randomly placed and moving objects, with the odd thing that walks back and forth and probably kills you. 1/10

Non-Enemies:

Technically, there are, but they function more like puzzles than character. 0/10

Levels:

A big and tedious complex. Sometimes, effort is put in, but most of the time it's a mess of nothing. 1/10

Player Agency:

Workable, but with noticeable issues. Jumping anywhere, which is often, is something you have to fight to do. You easily can do it, just not quickly. The jet cycle is nicer, but fuel isn't infinite. The less said about the hazards getting in the way of movement the better. 2/10

Interactivity:

Some nice puzzles, but done basically. Most items can only be used against the whole room, so there isn't a lot of strategy. 2/10

Atmosphere:

Tedium. You do many of the same things in the same places again and again. It's empty and I was incredibly aware of time passing. 0/10

Graphics:

Very nice. Everything is nicely detailed, computers look nicer than some games released ten years down the line. Animation is lacking, since your character seems to barely have any when he's walking and none when he's flying. The debris has a nice animation, smoothly turning around even as it disintegrates, but other objects feel rushed. 3/10

Story:

Basically ignorable once you get in the game. 1/10

Sound/Music:

Nearly dead silent outside of a few things like your gun or the crusher. Very Atari 2600 level sounds. 1/10

That's 12.

While the usual cheap methods to lengthen game time are here, there is a game here. Perhaps if the game was about half the size or something was done to the combat to not feel completely pointless there might be something here. Even with these time lengthening methods, you're not playing this for more than 8 hours. Even if you completely ignore making a map, possible but not ideal, the paths you need to take are more than enough.