¢SOFTWARE SCENE¢¢¢VICKY¢Publisher: LK AVALON Poland¢Supplier: ANG,¢ Ridderkerksestraat 60,¢ 3114 RK Schiedam,¢ Netherlands.¢Price: approx. 5 pounds¢¢Reviewed by Daniel Baverstock alias 'ODI'.¢¢¢ Back again after a spate of A-levels and ready to review anything that gets in my way. This time it's another Polish game made available by the boys and girls at Holland based ANG.¢¢ Vicky, a game thats been around since early 1993, is a large platform wanderer-style game involving a small Asterix-like Viking armed with an axe.¢¢ Firstly, the package, as with many from Poland, consists of a laser printed envelope with a disk slip inside as well as instructions. Upon loading you are presented with screen after screen of animated pictures accompanied by the story line in fancy writing. Unfortunately, as with the instructions on the inner sleeve, these are in Polish.¢¢ As the story progresses from the peaceful village, through a storm at sea, to the shipwreking and evil sorcerer, now and then a well animated wise man is seen turning the pages of a book aided by candle light.¢¢ A catchy tune plays in the background while you 'space bar' your way through the pictures (and if you're really keen, through a Polish dictionary!).¢¢ A further disk access and decompression away, and the title screen appears, consisting of a picture of Vicky, credits and some fairly impressive music, using sampled beats, tones and chip music. With a little improvement in the sample sound quality, this would sound even better.¢¢ The game itself is, as I mentioned before, in the platform wanderer-style, involving rope climbing, walking, rope climbing, hacking, rope climbing and dying!¢¢ It is very easy to get lost as the game is a maze of eerie stone walls, ropes, dead ends, the occasional idol and Viking helmet as well as animated wizards, lizards, dragons, jellyfish, birds and zombies.¢¢ The colour scheme is a mixture of pink, green, blue and black which adds to the confusion.¢¢ The creatures materialize out of nowhere and usually close in on you, despite your desperate axe hacking.¢¢ The occasional spinning coin is dropped and the number you have is displayed in the lower half of the screen, along with your lives (starting with 8).¢¢ Until I get around to buying a Polish dictionary I can only guess that you either have to collect a certain number of coins, get to the exit, or both.¢¢ Once dead, a picture of Vicky appears, with his head bowed as he is welcomed to hell by a devil. An even more catchy tune, again with samples, is played.¢¢ Overall, the gameplay is hampered by a little too much repetitiveness and a lack of understanding concerning the object of the game. On a positive point, the music and animated intro / ending is a great effort. Keep heading in this direction and there could be some really special games.¢¢
