Games galore #13: Tristam Island, Vegetables Deluxe, Teserae, Wiz - Quest for the Magic Lantern

More new Amiga games! It's always great fun to write these articles, skimming through YouTube videos, news reports and forum posts, discovering new stuff and updates of old stuff. This time we have a text adventure, a puzzler, an arcade classic, and a jumping and running wizard.

Tristam Island

Commercial title "Tristam Island" was announced around the beginning of October 2020, and meanwhile has been fully released. It's a Infocom Z-Machine interpreter text adventure, available for 36 (!) different platforms, including Amiga. Here's a snippet of it's storyline:

"After crashing your plane at sea, you end up drifting to a small island, with not much to survive. You explore, and find out the island was inhabited, years ago. But why did the people leave? And why is there a fence around the white house at the top of the hill?"

Hm, that sounds mysterious. So make sure you have a glass of wine and a bowl of peanuts at hand, and dive into the world of "Tristam Island". According to the author you'll have to solve puzzles and explore lots of different places, in sometimes dark, sometime humorous settings. The game aims to avoid frustrating limitations and weaknesses of early games of the genre, and have a "standard" level of difficulty.

"Tristam Island" can be purchased for 3.99 USD on itch.io, giving you access to all platforms' versions.

Go to the game's website to find out more, and download a demo version:

https://hlabrande.itch.io/tristam-island

Additional sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-10-00003-EN.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine
http://aminet.net/package/game/text/tristam-island-demo

 

 

Vegetables Deluxe

Also from early October is Mike Richmond's "Vegetables Deluxe", originally developed for the Commodore 64 in 2019, now available for all Amiga computers.

In this puzzle game you have to match tiles in a kind-of four-in-a-row way using your mousepointer, but there's more to it. More complex game rules, and four different playing modes should keep you occupied for hours and hours. Nice and simple graphics, some visual effects, neat accompanying music and decent sound effects - very good job, this has addictive qualities.

Here's a great review video of "Vegetables Deluxe" (2020-10-07):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNMrR-SQE1E

Go to...

https://mikerichmond.itch.io/vegetables-amiga

...to download - and don't forget to pay for! - "Vegetables Deluxe"

Additional sources:
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/10/vegetables-deluxe-fabulous-c64-match-3.html
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-10-00012-EN.html

"Teserae" Tetris clone

Smash hit game Tetris has another clone with "Teserae" for Amiga 500 (and higher). Created as an Atari ST port in the early 1990s, it seems "Teserae" has now been resurrected by Artstate Digital, and re-released. Whatever the case, you know the rules, and as every Tetris clone it's great fun. An arcade classic plus great music and dizzying background visual effects in a pocket sized archive - a must have for the casual gamer.

Here's an old video from the previous Amiga release (2012):

Download the 42 kB zip archive from the author's website on itch.io:
https://hewco64.itch.io/teserae

Additional sources:
https://hewco64.itch.io/
https://www.facebook.com/Hewco64
http://amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2020-10-00022-DE.html
https://twitter.com/ArtstateDigital

Wiz - Quest for the Magic Lantern

Mutation software boldly returns to the Amiga gaming scene with a bunch of releases, among which is beautiful platformer "Wiz" for AGA Amigas.

"Wiz" is just a joy to watch and listen to, this maybe has to be the cutest platformer of 2020. No big surprises here, little wizard jumps and runs and collects things, and so on - but with it's great looking AGA color palette, loveable characters, lots of little animations, music and sound effects that perfectly fit the atmosphere, and an overall child-friendly approach, it's really a game that does everything right. Great work - buy it!

Created by Adrian Cummings, "Wiz" was released in early November 2020, with a separate CD32 version available.

Promotion video "Wiz - Quest for the Magic Lantern (Amiga AGA)" (2020-10-15):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtbdQ4H3hmI

Go to...

http://mutationsoftware.uk

...to find out more, and purchase the game!


Additional sources:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=102758
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2020-10-00026-EN.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2020/10/wiz-quest-for-magic-lantern-promo-video.html

* * *

...and again some bonus gaming news:

Epic Skidmarks - for webbrowsers

"Skidmarks" and "Super Skidmarks" are Amiga game classics no one should miss. 25 years after the original releases the original developers have revisited the concept, and created "Epic Skidmarks - for webbrowsers!

https://epicskidmarks.com title screen

So now if you're equipped with a modern webbrowser you can enjoy Skidmarks mayhem in high-definition quality, with a massively upgraded physics engine, and internet-multiplayer.

Of course nothing beats the original Amiga-1200-8-player-nullmodem-link experience, but apart from that, "Epic Skidmarks" certainly is every Skidmarks fan's dream come true.

in-game screenshot

Go to...

https://epicskidmarks.com

...and play "Epic Skidmarks" (beta) right now!

You can follow latest "Epic Skidmarks" news via twitter:

https://twitter.com/EpicSkidmarks

* * *

  Stay tuned for "Games galore #14"!

Check out "Games galore" main page with all articles -
click here!

* * *

Support Amiga game development! Buy a game!