Max Pickles Part 1 - The Haunted Castle (ZX Spectrum)
by Ariel Ruiz

Max Pickles Part I was included as an entry for the ZX Dev MIA / Remakes compo as it is a remake of previous unreleased games by the same developer designed in 1988, namely The Castle and The Castle II. The game combines puzzles and platforming elements over 12 detailed screens with many elements and concepts borrowed directly from the developers previous unreleased titles.

Max Pickles is a bit of a rebel, a punk rocker, a poor man's Vivian from The Young Ones if you like, and is tired of being bullied by society for it. He's after a bit of respect and social validation. Luckily from out of the blue he becomes aware of the existence of a secret map detailing the location of a diamond mine. This map itself is hidden in the depths of a large medieval castle where strange goings on occur on a regular basis. Too spooky. Still our rebellious rocker plans to take this opportunity to get rich, and get all that important respect stuff too.

 

Once the game has loaded a language option for Spanish or English appears followed by three main game options. One to start the game with keys QAOP and space to control Max, another to start the game with keys you've redefined and a third option where you actually redefine the keys. The lack of a joystick option is not something that bothers me personally, I'll take keyboard controls all day long over anything else, especially QAOP. But it may be a little off putting if joystick control is your thing.

Max can move left and right, climb up and down and jump in the direction he's facing. Switches are the order of the day. There's plenty of them in each level and they all basically do the same thing. Alter a part of the playing area by adding or taking something away, e.g. adding a rope, opening a door, removing a branch, etc. The final switch usually reveals the level exit.

The game is a little bit jerky but runs at a decent pace. I'm not slagging the game off too much at this point because rather surprisingly it's written almost entirely in Sinclair ZX Spectrum Basic. That's right, the same language you used to type code into your Spectrum line by line by copying from those 1980’s home computer magazines on the promise of a free game at the end of all that laborious typing, a promise that was as frequently broken as the code itself, sadly. So this is a feat that should be shown a fair amount of kudos. The developers reasoning was that the previous games were written in basic and he also wanted to show off the capabilities of the language. When you bear all this in mind that 'decent pace' I mentioned earlier suddenly turns into something Barry Allen-esque.

It does feel like our punk rock rebel needs the help of the speed force during the game as there is quite a harsh little timer counting down as you progress through the puzzles in the level. It doesn't leave much room for error and is reduced even further if you stand on one of the levels nasties.

 

The games graphics are functional but also stylish and each level looks unique in it’s own way. The audio is what C64 owners think all Spectrum games sound like. Beep, beep, beep, buzz.

The simple mix of action and puzzles works well. The graphics do what they need to do. The levels are well thought out and all the puzzle elements make sense. The developer has made a valiant attempt at creating a narrative around the games he's created, their history and the characters in them. It's a wonderful idea that this game benefits from and fully deserves.

The movement of Max can sometimes feel a little jerky and unresponsive. The game doesn't take full advantage of the capabilities of the hardware due to the limitations of Basic. The sound effects are there just to let you know the game has sound effects and that timer can be terribly harsh.

The developers plan was to show off what could be done using only Basic to code the game and I feel he's accomplished what he set out to do. The game is fun to play once you get used to it. The levels are well thought out. None of the puzzles defy logic. The timer gives a good deal of urgency to proceedings but it does increase the games difficulty significantly, maybe a tad too much for some players. I'm looking forward to trying out the sequels once I've completed this.