Article 274 of comp.sys.amiga.reviews: Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: cld@wucs1.wustl.edu (Christopher L. Davis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Oxyd Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 3 May 1993 14:54:00 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 234 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Approved: barrett@math.uh.edu Distribution: world Message-ID: <1s3bm8$p0k@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: cld@wucs1.wustl.edu (Christopher L. Davis) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, platform, strategy, arcade, commercial PRODUCT NAME Oxyd BRIEF DESCRIPTION A game of puzzles and tests that challenge you to restart all the oxygen generators (called Oxyds) on your planet. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Dongleware Publishing, Inc. Address: P.O. Box 391829 35 Howard Street Cambridge, MA 02139 USA Telephone: (800) 228-OXYD (228-6993) (617) 497-1130 FAX: (617) 497-1130 E-mail: 72377.351@compuserve.com (Compuserve 72377,351) thomas_tempelmann@m.maus.de The Compuserve address is recommended for quicker replies. LIST PRICE The demo is free (on anonymous archive site wuarchive.wustl.edu). The Oxyd Book is available from Dongleware for US $39.00 plus postage. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Oxyd requires 2.5 Meg of RAM. A hard drive is highly recommended. I have not tried it on my 68000, but things were quite quick on my Fusion 40 accelerator. SOFTWARE There are no special software requirements. I tested with AmigaDOS version 2.04. I could not try 1.3, or anything later (2.1 or 3.0). Everything worked fine under 2.04. COPY PROTECTION There is no copy protection per se. The first 10 levels are available to all. Starting with level 11, there are "tokens" or blockers sprinkled around some levels. They usually block a key part of the map and must be removed. The only way to remove them is to consult the Oxyd book (mentioned above). The token will display a code, and that code determines which page,row and column of the book you use for countering the token. The program is hard drive installable. It can be annoying to look up the codes in the book, but I prefer this to disk-based copy protection. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 2000 with Fusion 40 (68040) accelerator 2 Meg of Chip RAM and 8 Meg Fast RAM AmigaDOS 2.04 (KickStart 37.175, WorkBench 37.67) REVIEW Oxyd is an enjoyable game of puzzle solving for both kids and adults. A co-worker and I have both really enjoyed playing it. His young daughter also enjoys the game. The Premise, from the Oxyd book (without permission): "Welcome to the world of Oxyd. Investigate the unknown world of bits and bytes in your computer. In the guise of a small black marble you will wander through landscapes with manifold types of tokens, landscapes full of uncountable objects. And truly fascinating landscapes they are... "But this world is threatened. overnight the mysterious Oxyds, which provide the world with vital oxygen, have closed themselves. Now the entire world threatens to suffocate. Only you can rescue this digital world. "Your task is to find all Oxyds in a given landscape and to touch them. Two of each of these Oxyds have the same pattern or color and must be touched one after another in order to remain opened and to give out vital oxygen. If it was only as simple as it sounds! Unfortunately the Oxyds are scattered far and wide through the landscape, and you must frequently think carefully indeed, before you can get to them. In addition, most of the other tokens and objects in this would have completely unknown effects. Every token and every object has its own particular characteristics and is connected in a complex fashion with the other tokens and objects. Besides courage and talent you also need a good deal of scientific curiosity. "Not until all the Oxyds have been opened can you reach the next landscape. The Oxyd world consists of 100 different landscapes. You have a long way to go before you can rescue all landscapes from suffocation. But it pays off: as savior of the Oxyd world you will have ample rewards." Well, enough of that. Oxyd is a multiple platform game. Versions exist for the Amiga, Atari, Mac, PC, and NeXT. Three languages are supported -- French, English and German -- and can be changed with a simple keystroke. Let's move on to the game. The playfield is called a landscape. To get to the next landscape, you must open all the Oxyds on the current landscape. This is done by touching them. They will stay open if you touch Oxyds of the same color in sequence. The puzzles and tasks range from very simple to very difficult. There are clues on many landscapes: some are helpful, but others are confusing or not so helpful. There are bombs, dynamite, lasers, mirrors, hidden passages, and all sorts of other toys available. Couple these things with landscapes over bottomless pits, crumbling floors, slides, pools of water to drown in, quicksand, and assorted traps, and each landscape becomes a worrisome place for a lone little black marble. Oxyd is quite a simple and elegant little game. The animation is quick and smooth. I found it easy to play and a pleasurable diversion, unlike some other games that are sometimes too obtuse. Some landscapes are purely intellectual, others rely totally on your manual dexterity, and still more rely on a close mix of the two. DOCUMENTATION No paper documentation or README file came with the demo, but there is a guide incorporated into the game, giving some basic details of playing. The Oxyd book has documentation, hints, and all the codes to make blocking tokens break up disappear. The book is nicely bound. It also contains details about all the other platforms and how the different platforms can interact. There is a two-player mode that can be played by connecting two computers via a serial cable, or network. There are 100 other levels for two players to explore. LIKES AND DISLIKES I noted a lot of likes in the review but will re-state them here. I liked the simplicity of Oxyd, and that simplicity really drew me to play. You start out on the first level, and progress from there. Each level is assigned a code when you first enter it. At the beginning of your game, you are asked for a code for the particular level you wish to play. This allows you to start where you left off, instead of at the beginning each time. (It also allows my co-worker's daughter to play her favorite levels over again.) One hint: don't play level 10 more than once. Cleverness of the puzzles has also kept me interested. I am on level 38. My coworker is on level 72 or so. He has the book, and I have just ordered it. I only have one major dislike: the bugs I have found (see BUGS section). The only other dislikes I have are minor. The resolution is 320x200, and I wish it were 640x200 or 640x400 (or at least had options for those resolutions). Another problem with Oxyd was that it seems to disallow multitasking. I tried the typical Amiga-M and could bring up no other screen, nor could I pull down the current screen to access others. I consider this a serious shortcoming and would haved called it a major dislike, but it just fell short of that category, since it didn't interfere with actual game play. Welcome improvements would be addressing the bugs listed in the BUGS section, and making multitasking available. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS I noted how all the elements of Oxyd make it an extremely enjoyable game to play: much more so than other similar types of puzzle and action games. BUGS I found quite a few that mostly dealt with my Fusion 40. If I had the 68040's copyback mode on, I would have strange problems. In one case the timed game facility would pop on, and could not be turned off. In another case, no matter what I did, the blocker squares could not be destroyed. I read the codes and nothing would happen. Oxyd currently seems to interfere with a serial connection. I first tried to play it with my terminal emulator running with a session on a remote UNIX machine. When I finished playing, I returned to that session to find it locked up and could not release it. I attribute this to its looking at the serial port in preparation for the multi-player game. VENDOR SUPPORT Dongleware is open from 9 to 5 Eastern time for orders and general information. If you are stuck on a certain problem, you may call the local Boston area number between 5 and 8 pm Eastern time on Thursdays ONLY for hints. There is also a support person in Germany who can be reached via e-mail at the addresses above. WARRANTY None. CONCLUSIONS Oxyd has a lot of potential. I hope there are another few hundred levels to play in the future. Once the bugs are fixed and some features added, it will be a first class game. I would give Oxyd 4+ out of 5 stars. 5+ for actual game and 3 for system unfriendliness (mentioned above). COPYRIGHT NOTICE This review is in the public domain. --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu