Heartland

Odin, 1985

Written by Chris Owen, HTML'd by Arnt Gulbrandsen.

Controls

Keyboard, Kempston

Aim of the game

Asleep one night, you dream of a land where a magical Book has been stolen by the demon Midas. The last chapter has been torn out and its six pages scattered through the land, while six Dark Pages created by Midas stand ready to be inserted into the book - which would doom the land to eternal darkness thereafter. Armed only with your trusty top hat and bed, you must rescue the six pages, destroy the Dark Pages and defeat Midas...

Game play

Much like a platform game - you can walk left or right, jumping to collect objects or to clear fatal gaps. Doorways and lifts links screens and levels and can be used by going "into" and "out of" the screen. The bed permits travel between the various areas of the Heartland once you have collected pages of The Book. The Book flashes when a missing page is nearby, but it's up to you to identify the page as Good or Bad. Along the way, it is wise to collect some weapons. The top hat is weak but can be fired an infinite number of times; the knife is more powerful but gives less hits; and the fireball is the most powerful but only lasts a few shots. The various evil minions will do their best to sap your strength, as shown by the face of Midas in the top bar. As your energy drains, so Midas' face expands in size until you are dead... Various spells fly around some screens, some good, some bad. The large star spell is particularly bad, homing in and draining your energy. A small star spell will however give you temporary invincibility while bubble clusters restore your energy. The passage of time is shown by the two hourglasses at the top of the screen. The glass on the left revolves every few seconds, while the one on the right takes about eight minutes to complete a revolution. This one shows the amount of time you have left on a particular level; you only have eight minutes before Midas' malign influence makes it impossible to escape! - which means, of course, Game Over.

Comments

"One of the better games on the Spectrum."

Rating

92% (CRASH #31, August 1986)

Now

One of the prettiest Spectrum games ever... it's a bit too hard though!

Keys

Z, C, V, M      - Left                  - Joystick left
X, V, N         - Right                 - Joystick right
A to L          - Through door          - Joystick down
out of screen
Q to P          - Through door into     - Joystick up
screen / Jump
1 to 0          - Fire / Use bed        - Joystick fire

Nettverksgruppa, 5/10-94, sinclair@nvg.ntnu.no